From The Hotline Latest Edition for Friday, April 18,2008

INDIANA (5/6 PRIMARY)

The Not-So-Perfect Storm

Fri. Apr. 18, 2008


IN counties are "struggling to process" voter applications in time to send their poll books to printers, and some say a state system designed to clean up voter rolls is "hindering their progress." Marion County voter registration board member John Riordan: "It's been a train wreck. The reason we're working 24 hours is because the system is working so poorly." The county had about 20 temporary workers and staff working 24 hours a day to process more than 40K applications they've received since 3/25. Registration officials in counties including Lake, Allen and Vanderburgh said it could take 6 minutes or more to enter one voter into the database during peak periods.


Deputy Sec/State Matt Tusing: "The speed and performance of the system is a minor problem. The perfect storm got generated but the system was stable and robust. It's caused a little bit of a hang-up at the local level. All in all, the system did well." A presentation delivered at a meeting between county officials and Quest Information Systems acknowledged the company received complaints that the system "had performed 'unacceptable to slower than preferred.'" Howard County Clerk Mona Myers said she's afraid problems with the database will be magnified in the lead-up to the general election (AP, 4/17).