Minnesota Ballot Tracking Website Restored After Briefly Going Down
MINNEAPOLIS (AP/WCCO) — A website that Minnesotans can use to track their absentee ballots went down for more than an hour Saturday morning, along with other parts of the state's online voter registration system, with just three days to go until the Nov. 3 election.
The problem was caused by a hardware issue impacting the online tools for voters and the Statewide Voter Registration System functionality, according to Risikat Adesaogun, a spokesperson from the Secretary of State's office. The system was restored around 10:15 a.m. She also said there is a process for administering absentee ballots even when the SVRS is down, so voters should be able to cast their absentee ballot on Saturday.
The ballot tracking site, has seen a surge of use as a record number of Minnesotans vote early this year. But those looking Saturday morning to check whether their ballot had been received and counted encountered an error message until the problem was solved.
Adesaogun said on Saturday afternoon that the Secretary of State's office would be taking the website offline at 3 p.m. to work on their systems. The system is back up and running as of 3:45 p.m.
Lines formed at a number of early voting centers on Saturday morning as Minnesotans heeded the call to drop off their absentee ballots in person, instead of mailing them in; or to vote early; or to vote in person Tuesday following a federal court ruling Thursday that left the door open to challenges of the validity of mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day, even if they are postmarked by Tuesday.
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(© Copyright 2020 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
