Virginia voter registration down due to cable cut

Tue Oct 13 21:11:53 UTC 2020

On Tue, Oct 13, 2020 at 2:41 PM Sean Donelan <sean at donelan.com> wrote:
>
> On Tue, 13 Oct 2020, Christopher Morrow wrote:
> > <cough>spof</cough>
> >
> > the vita folk have a history of 'not really understanding large scale
> > compute/network operations' :(
>
> Reportedly, the VITA data center and Virginia voter registration system is
> back up.
>
> According to VITA, a Verizon fiber was struck during a roadside utilities
> construction project near Route 10 in Chester, VA.  As network engineers
> know, fiber cuts happen all the time due to construction.  Malicious cuts
> and sabatoge occur, but are rare and usually obvious. Absent clear and
> compelling evidence, assume normal stupid reasons for outages.
>

sorry I meant that: 1) yes clearly it's still the middle of
roadwork/backhoe season, 2) i'm surprised that a single path failure
for their production datacenter was enough to take the system offline.
'spof' there meant: "Wow, a single point of failure in their outside
plant?"

>
> There are various long-term structural problems with election
> administration across 10,000+ jurisdictions in the United States.  A lot
> of duct-tape and heroic work needed by election administrators to keep
> things running.
>
>
> Election administration in Australia, Norway and Luxembourg tend to score
> the best with 10 out of 10 according to international election observers.
>
> Election administration in the United States of American tends to score
> around 7 or 8. There will be problems and delays. Not perfect,
> embarrassing and USA should do better. But still a full and free election.