Voter Registration System is Broken
by Christine Stuart | March 5, 2008 1:30 PM
Posted to Election 2008
| State Capitol
A week after the presidential primary, Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz wrote
this letter to Gov. M. Jodi Rell alerting her to the problems with the Centralized Voter Registration System, a computer program that contains the names, addresses and party affiliation of all registered voters in the state.
“The system crashed several times on the day before the Primary and has not yet been completely restored,” Bysiewicz wrote in a Feb. 14 letter to Rell. The system “is a critical tool for Registrars of Voters in ensuring the accuracy of enrollment lists and in preventing voter fraud.”
In the days leading up to the primary, local registrars of voters were unable to enter voter information into the system because the software application and network continued to fail.
In her letter to Rell, Bysiewicz said the state’s Department of Information Technology is not making fixing the system a priority and fears if nothing is done the system may go down again in November.
The Department of Information Technology took exception to Bysiewicz’s characterization of the issue.
In a letterMonday, Diane Wallace, Chief Information Officer for DOIT, said “I read your letter as an effort to deflect blame for any potential problems with the Centralized Voter Registration System in November to DOIT, despite the fact that you have been aware of the problems with this system for years.”
Wallace points out that the system was developed by private consultants “hired by the Secretary of State’s office,” and is a system that “has a well-known history of sub-par performance and requires more than the seasonal and sporadic attention afforded to it by your office.”
“There are application issues that create a ‘white screen’ when voters are registered. There are network capacity issues during peak processing times. There are also application throughput capacity limitations,” Wallace wrote. In conclusion Wallace wrote that “we are gravely concerns that enhancements may not be sufficient to address the performance issues by the November elections.”
In the letter Wallace suggested Bysiewicz “consider replacing this application with one that meets the State’s current and future business requirements.”
Rell said Wednesday morning after a speech to the business community that DOIT has made fixing the system a “priority,” but continues to express concerns about the vendor that created the program. “DOIT has been there and will continue to be there,” Rell said.
Since these letters were exchanged the Secretary of State’s office, DOIT, and the vendor PCC Technology Group, have had at least two conversations about what needs to be done to improve the system.
Deputy Secretary Lesley Mara said Wednesday that she would love to have a project plan for the system upgrade to share with the local registrars, so next time the system goes down or is too slow she can tell them when it will be working properly. At the moment she said she just has to reassure them it will improve.
In an interview Wednesday Bysiewicz said that this needs to be a priority for the state, which is why she involved Rell in the conversation. “Is is too much to ask for our servers to work?” Bysiewicz said. She said no one is suggesting DOIT has failed to give her office its time, but with 90 percent voter turnout expected in November her agency needs to be put at the top of the project list.
Mara said her understanding is that when the system is taxed by capacity, i.e. too many local registrars are inputing voter information into the computer, the program should be using two servers at DOIT headquarters in East Hartford, but for some reason the application only reaches one server and then pushes it overcapacity until it crashes.
The good news is nobody should be disenfranchised at the polls in Novemeber since provisional and presidential ballots will be available to voters. Bysiewicz said even if the poll worker can’t find a voters name on a list because it hasn’t been entered into the system yet, they will still be able to vote by provisional ballot.
Click hereto read Bysiewicz’s response to Wallace’s letter.
Comments (6)
Posted by: matt w | March 5, 2008 2:02 PM
In the letter Wallace suggested Bysiewicz "consider replacing this application with one that meets the State's current and future business requirements."
Yes. I have used it, and it is a huge pile of shit. Seriously, it's 1994 internet technology.
The good news is nobody should be disenfranchised at the polls in Novemeber since provisional and presidential ballots will be available to voters. Bysiewicz said even if the poll worker can't find a voters name on a list because it hasn't been entered into the system yet, they will still be able to vote by provisional ballot.
Cold comfort to those who care about who represents them at the Capitol.
Posted by: Incompetence Reigns Supreme | March 5, 2008 2:17 PM
This is a supreme clusterfuck. And while it might be partially due to problems with DOIT and servers, it's also another sign of the Secretary of State's supreme incompetence when it comes to technology.
Go to other states Web sites for information on elections, election returns and associated data, information on ballot access, etc. and you'll see what we're missing here in CT.
The most important thing is making sure everyone who has a right to vote is able to. But that data is also supposed to be available to the public, to parties, to campaigns. And a fucked up registration system causes huge problems up and down the line.
It needs to be fixed NOW.
Posted by: matt w | March 5, 2008 4:12 PM
That's the tradeoff for the local control that Republicans always talk about. This kind of info is all administered locally.
Posted by: greenpeas | March 5, 2008 10:54 PM
Why do I get the distinct impression that to have a system run in November we should abandon ship NOW and go with a local system that can be batch uploaded to a central database?
This is something I will be asking my more IT-savvy friends to confirm, but I do not think that a project described as so plagued by problems will be running beautifully by November, nor do I think that an agency with the diverse project schedule of DOIT is going to be able to dedicate sufficient time to this project and keep juggling their other projects.
By the way, how much technical savvy do the ROV staff people (?) who are supposed to be inputting this informaton actually have? Is that another piece of the issue?
Getting a bright idea about a project late in the game is not the same as having created several years ago e.g. A Strategic Plan for the SOTS office and our election administration system.
I would love to be wrong. It just feels like too little too late.
Posted by: Christine | March 6, 2008 7:08 AM
The system was originally built in 1994. In 2004 it was upgraded and all the ROV were forced to used it. My understanding is that since 2004 PCC Technology Group has been the vendor. According to Mara PCC Technology Group showed up at least once last year with two new servers for the CVRS system and DOIT refused to install them. Apparently with all the money from the federal Help America Vote Act, money is not the issue. It seems the more you scratch the surface, the more complicated it gets.
Posted by: NewHavenite | March 6, 2008 11:21 AM
I changed my party affiliation from "none" to a party a mere two weeks before the primary. I was so concerned about it that I called the New Haven Registrar of Voters' office to confirm that they received my form and had processed it (which they did) and I received the confirmation letter that same day. I then took that letter with me to the polls JUST IN CASE there was a problem (which there wasn't.) May I make a positive suggestion (since Republican-bashing and swearing aren't my style)? Since we KNOW we have a problem that is going to take a while to fix and we KNOW it is often related to volume, could we PLEASE convince all the media outlets (particularly television) to release frequent public service announcements explaining to people (not all of whom are as responsible as I am) to process their registrations early (which I did NOT do), return their ROV postcards as instructed, and check with their local offices IN ADVANCE if they think there might be a problem. A little public information here could go a long way! (That is, until we achieve that elusive PERFECTION you all seem to expect when we have a Republican governor, as opposed to a Democrat --"google" Wm. O'Neill.)