VR Systems Takes Responsibility for Florida Election Outage

On Election Night during Florida's primaries, many county election websites experienced significant outages due to a logging error from VR Systems, the vendor managing these sites. The company attributed the crash to an overwhelmed logging system that was intended as a security measure, which failed to handle the high volume of traffic, leading to timeouts and accessibility issues for voters and candidates. While the outages did not affect the vote counting or reporting to the Florida Department of State, they raised concerns about the preparedness of the technology for future elections. Cyber experts have criticized the testing protocols, suggesting that the system was not adequately evaluated for peak usage scenarios. Despite VR Systems' positive track record in Florida, questions remain regarding their ability to manage larger demands during the upcoming presidential election. The company has not provided detailed answers to concerns about their preparedness and future solutions.