City looking into online voting options after election night issues

Cambridge clerk says online voting system alternatives are still worth pursuing

CAMBRIDGE — The city will now be researching other online voting vendors after Dominion Voting Systems went down for an hour and a half on election night, said city clerk Michael Di Lullo, causing online polls to be extended by two hours.

While Di Lullo didn’t say Cambridge would definitively find another company to handle the voting, Monday’s fiasco — leaving many voters scrambling at the last minute to cast votes or head to physical polling stations — has them looking at what’s available.

The city has the option to let Dominion handle voting through 2022. The cost for using the provider is approximately $180,000 — $108,310 for tabulator rental and $68,000 for online capabilities. That price does include printing ballots and supplies, also under Dominion’s control.

“We have four years to examine the different types of vendors that are out there, the different types of systems that they have to offer,” Di Lullo said.

“We have an option to continue with Dominion, but that’s just an option. We’re not (bound), and perhaps we can examine and talk to others and learn from others and figure it out for 2022.”

Dominion issued a statement about what occurred on election night, stating a Toronto-based internet co-location provider placed an “unauthorized” limit on incoming traffic that was one-tenth of the system’s bandwidth. Dominion was unaware of the issue until they received complaints.

Di Lullo said Dominion will continue to face questions about what happened.

“I’ll still have to report to council and Dominion will have to answer and be accountable for their actions and why they had an issue with one of their companies in terms of the server base,” he said.

“That’s on them and they’re going to maybe address that to council because I’ll be relying on them, as they’re the ones responsible for it.”

Di Lullo assured, as did Dominion, the integrity of the voting wasn’t compromised during the service issue. He added that it didn’t take too long to resume service once the problem was identified.

“It went back up around five to eight and within 20 minutes we had responded back to everyone that had the email saying it’s taking long. I was super happy about that, that we were able to get back on it and get the system back up and going.”

Despite what happened, Di Lullo doesn’t think the city took a step back when it comes to confidence in online voting. Of the 28,292 ballots cast for the election, 8,678 were online. That’s up from 5,171 in 2014.

“I’m still on the fence about that because when you look at the numbers, what caused it was demand, really,” he said.

“So when you think about it, it’s like a positive, negative effect in the sense that, yeah, it was a step back that we were down an hour and 15 minutes, but the reason for the setback was not from all the things the media wants to say in terms of hacks and all that. It was because people wanted to go utilize that option.”

Susanne Hiller, city director of corporate communications, said extra costs for extending the voting deadline were “minimal” and election workers will receive one extra hour of pay due to physical polling stations staying open until 9 p.m.

Di Lullo believes it’s important to continue “to grow” online voting, despite Monday’s glitch.

“I think it would be detrimental not to continue to push forward and to do research and see how we can continue to engage the electorate,” he said.

“I think it’s my job to continue to do that. There was a stumble (Monday) night, but we’re still standing, we still came out of it and we still got results posted (that) night. Granted, it was a little bit later but we got it done.”

Not everyone was happy with the delay, however, as David Partridge expressed on the Cambridge Times Facebook page that he missed out on his chance to vote.

“Tried to register for the online voting shortly after the polls opened, got stuck in a ‘loop’ after entering my information and trying to obtain my PIN (number). It just kept throwing me back to the information page and asking me for my information repeatedly. I figured it was due to overload and left for work frustrated that my vote would not be registered,” he wrote.

North Dumfries, which went to online and telephone voting, had more success with technology election night, said deputy clerk Cynthia Hislop. The township went with Intelivote Systems Inc. as their provider for the election.

“Overall, we are very pleased with how this election went,” Hislop said in an email. “We received a lot of positive feedback from the public. Many people really liked the convenience of being able to vote any time and anywhere online or by phone, in addition to the system being very user friendly.”