Contra Costa County Election Web Site Crashes

Contra Costa County’s elections web site is down today due to a problem with a web hosting company that is affecting a number of counties nationwide.

The website has been down for more than three hours so far and the vendor, SOE Software, has not provided any estimate for when it will be restored, according to Assistant Registrar Scott Konopasek.

Konopasek said the company, which the county has worked with for the past seven years, had initially thought bandwidth or capacity issues might be responsible for the breakdown, but could not find problems in that area and is still searching for the cause.

Konopasek said the outage will not affect the county’s ability to count and process votes but has made it harder for voters to look up information including the locations of their polling places.

“It’s a customer service issue,” Konopasek said.

Elections officials are cross-posting polling locations and other election information to the county’s main web site at www.co.contra-costa.ca.us.

They will do the same with election results if the problem persists past 8 p.m. when the polls close. SOE, which describes itself as a “leading provider of election management and online voting solutions,” has not yet returned messages seeking comment.

The company’s website is also down this morning.

--Bay City News

--Image via Shutterstock