DALLAS — The company that maintains Dallas County's elections website lost a vote of confidence from county commissioners on Tuesday.
The firm got a tongue lashing from commissioners, furious that the site crashed on two consecutive Election Days — the last spring's primary and again during the November 4 general election. The site was unavailable for more than seven hours on both days.
"We pay them a maintenance fee, and what are they maintaining?" Commissioner John Wiley Price pointedly asked the county's elections administrator.
Price and other commissioners demanded that company officials step up to the podium to give an accounting.
"We apologize sincerely for any inconvenience that this caused for the voters of Dallas County," said Bill Murphy, a representative of SOE Software. "Over the last two election cycles we've had issues that we regret."
He said the company would maintain the site for a year without charge.
Company officials said the crash on primary day was caused by insufficient server capacity. They said capacity was added ahead of the general election, and they thought that would resolve the problem.
But they said the Election Day crash last Tuesday was caused by a different issue that caused a meltdown. They acknowledged that they had failed to properly monitor those technical processes. The disruption also affected other counties that the company maintains.
"We are putting specific processes and procedures in place to ensure that these don't happen in the future," Murphy pledged.
Toni Pippins-Poole, Dallas County's elections administrator, said her office received many calls from voters wanting help finding their polling places after the website crashed. She said she had no way of knowing whether the absence of online information prevented anyone from voting.
It wasn't until around 5 p.m. on Election Day that voters were automatically redirected to the county's main website, which contains the same information as SOE's site did. Voters who knew about the main website could have found polling place information throughout the day.
Pippins-Poole said company officials have told her that they are going to create an off-site server capacity for Dallas County that can be activated in emergency situations. Dallas County currently shares server capacity with other counties in Texas.
"We're going to have our IT people from Dallas County inspect those servers and make sure what they're proposing will work," Pippins-Poole said.
Commissioners were not placated by the company's assurances. Several said they worried about problems during a presidential election, when turnout typically is far higher.
"I'm going to be very honest with you: As a dentist, I don't do a root canal three times," Commissioner Elba Garcia said.
And Commissioner Theresa Daniel minced no words: "Voting is one of those very fundamental democratic rights that cannot be messed with — so fix it."
