The company responsible for the online voting system in Bradford West Gwillimbury has blamed the Election Night crash on a slow down caused by a Toronto-based facility.
About 51 municipalities around Ontario started experiencing slow traffic with Dominion Voting Systems around 6 p.m., according to a press release issued by the company late Monday night.
“This load issue was documented, reviewed and determined to be the result of a Toronto-based Internet Colocation provider placing an unauthorized limit on incoming voting traffic that was roughly 1/10th of the system’s designated bandwidth,” read the release.
A co-location provider is a data centre facility in which a business can rent space for servers and other computer hardware.
Dominion was unaware of the problem until municipality representatives started contacting it for help and to share complaints from voters, read the release.
“Once we became aware of the problem, Dominion was able to quickly identify the source of the issue and work with the provider to resolve all issues with the system service by 7:30 p.m.,” read the release.
“Unfortunately, the 90-minute slowdown and resulting bandwidth issue caused a varying number of voters to experience slow response times and system time-outs.”
Many communities affected by the crash have extended the voting period. In Bradford West Gwillimbury, residents have until 8 p.m. today to cast their ballots.
The town will also be hosting an Election Night gathering at the Bradford and District Memorial Community Centre at 7:30 p.m.
“Dominion regrets the challenges that our system load issue posed for both election officials and voters alike in today’s elections,” read the Dominion release.
“We want to assure Ontario voters that we will work to ensure this problem does not occur in future elections. It is important to note that at no time was the integrity of the system at risk of compromise, or in any way insecure.”
As of Monday morning, 5,603 votes had been submitted in the Bradford West Gwillimbury municipal election, making up a little more than 23 per cent of the eligible voters, according to Caleigh Clubine, the town’s community relations officer.
At an election gathering Monday evening, several Bradford West Gwillimbury candidates said their confidence in online voting is now lacking.
“If you voted early, it worked really good, (but) you have to have the proper services. You’ll get a large volume (and if you are not prepared for that) you haven’t done your job,” said Ward 4 incumbent Ron Orr.
“Does it shake our confidence in the system? Sure it does,” added Deputy Mayor James Leduc. “I’m frustrated the system wasn’t stress-tested enough. We won’t be strictly online voting again. We’ll have both systems again.”
