Hargett 'really sick' about election reporting failure

The demand for online vote results crashed a state computer system Thursday night, shutting down Tennessee Secretary of State Tre Hargett’s ability to count and post statewide vote totals and slowed the reporting of election results from Tennessee’s 95 counties.

Just before 10 p.m., Hargett’s spokesman issued an apology statement to the public saying the Secretary of State and his Division of Elections had lost the ability to post results. He later said the new system was put in place with “good intentions” but it didn’t work out.

“Due to the unprecedented volume of traffic on our web site, our servers have crashed," said spokesman Blake Fontenay. "As a result, we will not be able to continue to offer updates on election results throughout the evening. This service was something new that we tried this year - and we apologize for the inconvenience. When we receive the final results, we will post them online in a PDF format, as we have in years past."

The new reporting system was supposed to make collecting and posting vote totals from the state’s 95 county election commissions more efficient and easier for the public to track results. In tests earlier this week, everything worked fine and backup servers were in place, Fontenay said.

Yet, Thursday was a different story. There were signs of trouble earlier in the day as the state’s entire computer system crashed for a period, foreshadowing later troubles. By the time polls closed at 7 p.m. in Nashville, it was clear there were problems with the Secretary of State’s website.

It was hit-or-miss trying to click on the election results page, with visitors often receiving an error message. Fontenay said the heavy traffic of visitors coming to the site had also shutdown the ability of the local election commissions to upload results to the state’s central system.

The office had to improvise and started receiving faxes and emails from the local commissions. Some three hours after the polls closed, Fontenay said the new reporting system had been scrapped, and local officials were sending in results through email and faxes.