Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Editorial: Delays at the polls have already begun
A lack of communication Saturday left the statewide voter registry overtaxed.
From the RoundTable blog
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Virginia experienced an election hiccup Saturday when statewide voter registration computers stalled. That left some early voters waiting up to an hour to cast their ballots. With the commonwealth in play in a heated presidential election, let's hope better communication in Richmond prevents the same thing from happening Tuesday.
The computer system that caused the problems is called VERIS, the Virginia Election Registration and Information System. It holds a federally mandated list of every voter in Virginia that local election officials check when there is a question about a voter's registration status.
VERIS has never been a great system for the commonwealth. It took canned software from Indiana and tried to cram it into the commonwealth's election laws.
On Saturday, however, the problems were man-made, not systemic. The agency that runs VERIS figured it was a good day to generate statewide reports, a process that slowed the system to a crawl. They did not realize early voting was under way in election offices around the state.
Election officials knew, but the State Board of Elections does not run VERIS; the Virginia Enterprise Applications Program does. It took over the job from a private contractor this summer.
Eventually, the thinking in Richmond goes, the enterprise program will oversee a number of state databases, creating consistent data across agencies. When someone moves, for example, it will be a snap to update his driver's license, voter registration and other records.
That's the future. Right now Virginians should be worried that the people who run VERIS are not communicating well enough with elections officials. A slowdown like Saturday's could be devastating if polling places are crowded Tuesday.
The enterprise program will have extra staff on hand Tuesday and installed new hardware to handle an increase in demand.
An elections spokeswoman attributes miscommunications to the fact that the two agencies have been working together only for three months. She said elections officials have instructed the enterprise program not to generate any reports on Election Day.
Good. That sort of communication is essential going forward. Virginia cannot rely on the enterprise program to know election details on its own. That is not its job.
