By Patty Ducey-Brooks
After promoting an online voting system as the future of elections, the “Vibrant Uptown” group experienced a major flaw that shut down in-person voting on Tuesday, August 20. Residents and business owners from the Uptown community who chose to vote in person were frustrated and upset to learn there was no backup voting system available.
Worse, they were asked to leave without casting their votes.
Those who witnessed and were impacted by the voting failure — approximately 100 Uptown residents — denounced the breakdown and the excuses offered by “Vibrant Uptown” in its attempt to minimize its failure to manage an effective voting system.
Vibrant Uptown released the following statement after the voting fiasco:
During the in person voting event, the voting software detected a duplicate voter and suspended all activity. We had to pause the election until we are able to resolve this issue. In the meantime, online registration will remain open. Ballots cannot be delivered until the software is back up and running but nothing is lost. We will notify all once we have a timeline for rescheduling another in person vote to ensure all who want to vote will have the opportunity to do so. Thank you for your patience as we work out the kinks in this new system!
Several months ago, representatives from the Uptown Planners’ board filed multiple formal challenges related to the initial conduct of the Election Committee and asked numerous questions about its plans. The City Planning Department did not respond to those challenges or acknowledge the potential problems.
In addition, the Election Committee’s meetings document a resistance to community involvement, which critics say violates the state’s open-meetings laws.
There is serious criticism from previous board members who feel that the Vibrant Uptown group failed to anticipate probable challenges and was unwilling to learn from others’ advice and experience. A city department also wrongly gave Vibrant Uptown the ability to ignore basic fair election guidelines.
Other city offices were aware of the complaints but ignored the red flags. Lack of action by city staff enabled this election fiasco, and Council member Stephen Whitburn endorsed the flawed voting system without proper vetting.
This series of unfortunate events has raised serious concerns from candidates for Uptown Planning Board positions. They are rightly concerned about other undisclosed problems that seriously challenge the validity of the Vibrant Uptown’s voting system.
Residents who witnessed the voting system failure expressed the following concerns:
“They sent us home and will let us know when it will be rescheduled. We were not happy and want paper ballots at least as a backup. The computer help desk is located on the east coast and was closed so they couldn’t figure how to fix it. Several tried online but weren’t successful.”
“We got there just after 6 p.m. There were lots of people ahead of us and a growing line behind us. Voting was done on tablets, not paper. First, a person had to find the address or something online. Then the voter was sent to the next table to vote. There were only two in the first group, and they took a long time. At 7:30 p.m., the computers went down and stayed down. There were still about ten ahead of us and at least 50 behind us. All they could do was take our names for a future rescheduled event. Paper ballots would have fixed the whole thing from the beginning. Many IRATE people!!”
“It was a ridiculously long line. It took a long time! We still had to go online to vote in person! One woman started videotaping all of us standing in line and yelling election suppression! There was a poor older guy who was very disgruntled because he didn’t know how to work the online voting. He said, ‘I came here to vote on paper like I always have!’ He left WITHOUT voting!”
Many candidates for the planning board are demanding that the city and Councilmember Whitburn launch a thorough, independent review of the voting system failure.
Ugh.
Well, this new group has been shown to be stooges for the mayor. They just proved it, dramatically, by handling their election just like the city would have.
Karma works quickly…..
In the North Park Planning Committee elections that I participated in running, we had excellent, trouble-free software and paper votes, and multiple in-person opportunities to vote. The YIMBYs got along with everyone, played fair and several put extra effort into making sure everyone who wanted to could vote. And YIMBYs showed up to vote in person too.
It’s sad to see that the old, white Uptown Upstarts claiming more rights than the duly elected group simply can’t pull off a decent election.