EU referendum frenzy bazookas online voter registration. It's another #GovtDigiShambles

Registration to vote in the UK's EU referendum has been extended until midnight June 9 after No. 10's voter registration web site crashed. Legislation is being introduced to the House of Commons to extend the deadline for those wishing to register to vote in this month's referendum, minister for the Cabinet Office and …

[jason 7]

How come....

...whenever the IT manager says to the tech guys "How many servers will we need to handle this system/game?" And the tech guys say "Oh five should do it!" That they haven't learned by now to quadruple whatever figure they say.

[Dr. Mouse]

Re: How come....

In my experience, the tech guy says 5, the IT manager agrees, but the MD or bean counters say "That's too expensive, we'll manage with 2"

[Anonymous Coward]

The Cabinet Office claimed 500,000 people did successfully register on Tuesday.

That's a bit like describing the Second World War as a humanitarian success story because 2.3 billion people survived it.

[Richard Wharram]

Re: The Cabinet Office claimed 500,000 people did successfully register on Tuesday.

You'd think these sort of government services that will spike once in a blue moon would be better off with elastic infrastructure patterns.

[andy67]

Re: The Cabinet Office claimed 500,000 people did successfully register on Tuesday.

LOL! This is one of the best comments I've ever read on here :-)

[TitterYeNot]

Re: How come....

but the MD or bean counters say "That's too expensive, we'll manage with 2"

Yes they'll have started with 2, but then the techies in the know (i.e. not the PHBs) will have realised how inadequate this is and will have surrepticiously aquired:-

1) The Project Server that GDS is supposed to use to keep work delivery on schedule but no-one knows is there.

2) The Sharepoint cluster that the Department of Health is supposed to use for secure document storage, but which doesn't get used because Betty in admin has lost the post-it note with the password on it.

3) The fancy SQL Server clusters with full replication that were recommended by some smarmy consultant, which were supposed to be used by the Inland Revenue collections department, but which aren't in use because they ran out of budget before the front end was developed.

Result - 10 shiny new servers. Wipe all, install Windows Server 2012 / IIS / SQL Server, take one look at the GUI, scream, wipe all again, install Redhat / LAMP stack, all clustered together, running nicely with maximum resource load a whisker under 30%. Luverly.

It was all going so well until...

June 7th 21:40 - BOFH has had enough of watching Farage and Cameron, or anyone else for that matter, talking utter bollocks about the referendum and decides that drastic action is required. He casually drops 8 servers out of the cluster, turns off the lights, and whistling happily to himself, heads down the pub for a well deserved pint or 3 as the meltdown begins...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: How come....

Result - 10 shiny new servers. Wipe all, install Windows Server 2012 / IIS / SQL Server, take one look at the GUI, scream, wipe all again, install Redhat / LAMP stack, all clustered together, running nicely with maximum resource load a whisker under 30%. Luverly.

That's actually the real problem. When New Labour came in, they started a love affair with Microsoft and that infection of consulting-money driven idiocy has still not left the government despite some small wins like making ODF the default doc format (which, incidentally, resulted in a wholesale change of nothing whatsoever due to just how deep Microsoft has its claws in the system).

The problem is that with Microsoft comes a default acceptance that you need a shedload of resources to keep things running, so the inevitable excuse is always resource shortages rather than resource waste by an OS that has no business being used at the industrial levers you need for government. Microsoft servers generally don't unless you throw at least twice as many resources at it that you need for any form of Unix - why do you think the big boys such as Google, Amazon et al run Linux derivatives?

[jason 7]

Re: How come....

Sigh...so you say 10 knowing you'll only get the 5 you need.

Have you never done that? Works quite well.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: How come....

> Sigh...so you say 10 knowing you'll only get the 5 you need.

Nah, it's too much fun pulling out the email and saying "I told you so, muhahaha!"

Anon because... well...

[Vimes]

A pity that whilst Corbyn can pontificate about registering to vote he can't seem to be bothered to vote himself on something as important as the IP Bill.

Why is that?

https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2016-06-07/division/16060743001404/InvestigatoryPowersBill?outputType=Names

[wolfetone]

Well David Cameron, Osborne, Timmy Mallet, Zippy, John Cena didn't vote on it either.

[Primus Secundus Tertius]

Grow a pair

@Symon

It is called 'pairing'. The advice to every new MP is to grow a pair (or whatever, depending on sex).

So the PM is paired with the leader of the opposition and so on all the way down; as a result they don't have to be bothered with minor votes.

The ones who get left out are the newest MPs in the governing party. It is not surprising that sometimes they feel rebellious. The junior opposition MPs have great fun choosing who will be their pair.

[Dan 55]

He's for it but...

He can't vote no because that would mean his party would have to too and that would mean with the Tories' slim majority it's in danger of not passing.

He can't vote yes because it looks bad.

[Michael B.]

I wouldn't necessarily take the list of people who didn't vote as a cast iron sign of their support or otherwise because there is an agreement called pairing. This is where if an MP on one side is absent then an opposition MP will step aside and not vote to balance things out. http://www.parliament.uk/site-information/glossary/pairing/

[Vimes]

@Michael B.

That only works in cases where the total number of MPs in one party match the numbers in the other. Otherwise it can skew the results.

Pairing isn't an excuse IMO: it's just a way of abdicating responsibility whilst maintaining a veneer of acceptability at the same time.

Pairing should be banned. And Corbyn should be ashamed of himself if this is why he didn't turn up.

[Dan 55]

If it was pairing, I think someone other than the leader of the opposition could have been found.

In theory an MP's vote and a party leader's vote are worth the same, but a party leader also has to show leadership on bills such as this.

[TimR]

"Asked yesterday why the site had crashed, the Cabinet Office was unable to say but said its executives were in a meeting to determine the cause."

I'm sure that will help....

[Kane]

"Asked yesterday why the site had crashed, the Cabinet Office was unable to say but said its executives were in a meeting to determine the cause find someone to blame."

There, FTFY.

[Steve K]

Blamestorming

Ah yes - a blamestorming meeting!

[Anonymous Coward]

You pay peanuts...

..you get monkeys

[Simon Harris]

I'm in two minds about this...

One part of me says sod those who left it until 10pm or later yesterday - we've known for months there's going to be a referendum, and the voter registration site has been up for even longer, so if you're really interested in voting, you've had plenty of time already.

The other side of me says it's human nature to leave things to the last minute (how many people file their tax returns in the last hours of Jan 31st every year?), and the government should have specified the servers could be capable of handing the expected last minute surge.

[John Sager]

Re: I'm in two minds about this...

I'm in the 'sod them' camp. They've had plenty of time to register to vote, and there is a legally defined registration limit whatever the quality of the online registration process. I'm a bit more sympathetic to voting after the 10pm limit on polling day, if you have already joined the queue before 10pm.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I'm in two minds about this...

IF you have joined the queue before 22:00, but IN the queue at 22:00 then you will be issued with a card and allowed to vote.

Anyone who turns up 22:00:01 will NOT be allowed to vote.

[John G Imrie]

Re: I'm in two minds about this...

I believe if you are not in the polling by 10pm you are officially out of luck. However some returning officers have allowed those in the queue at 10pm to enter the polling station thus allowing those people a vote.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I'm in two minds about this...

me to. Got my postal vote organised a month ago when I realised I was going to be away on the 23rd. Posted the Vote off last week (voted to stay BTW) We get the same thing where I work. Boffin going away on research cruise, container due to be packed and shipped Friday, when do they show up to ask for IT equipment, that'll be Thursday lunchtime then. Deadline for submitting that big grant proposal application 4pm, when are they desperately trying to get it submitted during an JANET DDNS attack 345PM

How some of these people manage to find their own way home baffles me at times!

[MOV r0,r0]

Re: I'm in two minds about this...

No, voter reg is open all year round so more like PAYE and not a window in time as with tax returns.

How about people maintain their registration and rights outside of election time? You know, like you're supposed to.

[Simon Harris]

Re: I'm in two minds about this...

"No, voter reg is open all year round so more like PAYE and not a window in time as with tax returns."

On line tax returns (at least UK ones) aren't a 'window in time' either - for the due year you can submit them pretty much any time without penalty until 31 Jan, and pretty much any time after 31 Jan with a penalty.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I'm in two minds about this...

yep I get my return filled out over the course of the year, get it submitted at the start of Jan and normally pay up with a good couple of weeks to go before deadline day.

[eesiginfo]

Re: I'm in two minds about this...

The thing is.... this wasn't an advertised meat sale.

(So you turn up, late Saturday afternoon, and all the cheap meat has gone)

The date and time was set... where a person could register to vote.

It wasn't stated with the caution, that 'if you turn up backendish you might not be able to register'.

Add to that, the fact that the final dash to register, was always going to happen.

.... then factor in the technical capabilities that the government could bring to bear on managing this registration system...

What we get is a pure and simple failure to provide the correct systems.

It's no good blaming people for behaving like people, when dealing with the mass of general public.

This is what governing people is all about.

So who's fault is it?

It's probably down to the Civil Servants.

They are employed to implement the will of the government.

We can be sure that they are now developing complex excuses.

It's not even beyond reason that they are turning the failure to their advantage, to gain an increase in their IT budget.

Every cloud has a silver lining.

[Lotaresco]

Re: I'm in two minds about this...

"It wasn't stated with the caution, that 'if you turn up backendish you might not be able to register'."

Actually it was.

"... the commission is warning millions of unregistered voters not to leave it too late as no application will be accepted beyond the deadline."

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/07/surge-in-voter-registrations-expected-before-eu-referendum-deadline

[Triggerfish]

Re: I'm in two minds about this...

That says beyond, not near the end but before.

[veti]

Re: I'm in two minds about this...

Clearly, Cameron assumes that unregistered voters who've left it til the last moment are mostly gullible young people who are more likely to vote 'Remain'.

I wonder if he's right.

[graeme leggett]

Presumably the service was set up in expectation of a certain demand.

That a lot of people decided at the last minute (almost literally) to register, when the portal had been available for weeks, and publicised as such, is unfortunate but was it predictable?

If you are of a suspicious mind, you could conceive that as the recent surge in registration was among younger voters, who are predicted to be more Remain than Leave, that the 'crash' might have been down to Brexiteers trying to overload system and thus gerrymander the outcome.

[Justthefacts]

More likely, BRemainers *who own the server* took it briefly offline, so that in case the referendum gave the wrong result, it could be challenged. The UK will be asked to vote again until we give the right result.

Here is a list of EU referendums, and their results:

European Constitution:

No: France (55%), Netherlands (62%)

Cancelled: Czech Republic, Ireland, Poland, Portugal, UK, Denmark

Yes: Lux (57%), Spain (77%)

Every one of the Constitutions actionable provisions has now been passed into law separately.

Ireland rejected the treaty of Lisbon, 53.4% in 2008. So they were required to vote again on 2009, and duly gave the required answer (67.1%)

Greek citizens voted clearly to exit the EU, and that was ignored.

The UK will simply be asked to continue voting until they give the right answer.

[MOV r0,r0]

Fanciful. But we will see a real effort to game the postal vote with immigration arguments in 'mixed heritage' communities and Remain doing nothing about it.

For the preservation of democracy, if a constituency postal vote differs from the ballot box by a statistically significant amount it should be considered potentially fraudulent and investigated and the vote suspended if it materially effects the results. Yeah, ain't gonna happen.

[Ken Hagan]

"The UK will simply be asked to continue voting until they give the right answer."

If I am asked to vote again after a clear decision, I will vote for whoever previously won, on principle.

[Anonymous Coward]

Scotxit

Like Scotland & Independence

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't put it past a group of anti-referendum activists paying for a DDOS so they could throw the result into question.

[Anonymous Coward]

determine why its voter registration site crashed

Please let me think hard about this... OK, having consulted my extensive experience and know-how, it's because too many people, all at once, wanted to register by deadline. Think leaves on the railway track, snow in winter, online tax returns,etc. These are ALWAYS totally unexpected.

p.s. I prefer my £1M consultancy fee as a check, rather than bank transfer and it's got nothing to do with my unwavering faith in NatWest banking system.

[DuncanL]

Re: determine why its voter registration site crashed

We'd just like to check what currency you'd like your cheque in?...

[Sir Runcible Spoon]

Re: determine why its voter registration site crashed

If they had a half-decent load-balancer in front of the servers then huge demand shouldn't cause a problem.

Some people would be told 'we're a bit busy - keep trying' but it shouldn't actually break the site.

Please, someone, tell me they weren't running a single web server with no load control mechanism*!!

*I mean, if you know that is - don't just make it up :P

[Lotaresco]

Re: determine why its voter registration site crashed

"We'd just like to check what currency you'd like your cheque in?..."

Czech?

[cosymart]

Re: determine why its voter registration site crashed

We'd just like to check what currency you'd like your cheque in?... And which bank you have now transferred to as apparently NatWest is pants?

[Spudley]

So the site failed with and hour and a half to go before the deadline because loads of people suddenly tried to register to vote.

And then people complain.

Really?

Look guys, It's the most important decision we're going to make in a generation, and you've had months and months of build-up.

Given that, why did you leave it it till 10:30pm on the last possible day to finally decide to register to vote? Was that really sensible? What does it say about how much you actually care about the issues you'll be voting on?

Pardon me if I don't have any sympathy for you if the site happened to be down at the time. You had plenty of time to do it.

I have more sympathy for the site administrators who probably had a wretched night trying their best to keep the thing up and running for those last few hours, just to support a bunch of lazy muppets who couldn't be bothered to spend five minutes visiting the site at any time during the preceding months.

[Anonymous Coward]

If somebody is so disinterested to register 90 minutes before the deadline, there's bugger all chance of them turning up at the polls in the first place.

And even less chance of them having bothered to consider their opinion for more than 30 seconds.

[Scott 53]

Dear Disgusted

They weren't disinterested, they were uninterested. I'm surprised someone with your moniker doesn't know that.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Dear Disgusted

Re: disinterested

Good point, not sure how that slipped past my internal grammar nazi.

Maybe it's the affect of the lack of sleep effecting my thought processes ;)

[Jason Bloomberg]

On the other hand, the deadline was midnight, so everyone had a reasonable expectation they could register up until midnight.

I feel the same, everyone should have registered earlier - and I am somewhat surprised at the number needing to register - but, as an earlier poster stated, it's human nature to leave things to the last minute and we are well aware of that.

The ultimate question is; is it fair to deny someone the right to exercise the vote they are entitled to because they left it late and the system crashed?

And did anyone warn people that could or would be the case? The answer seems "no"; they were told they could register until midnight, yet they were not able to do so. The fault does not seem to me to rest with the victims.

[John Brown (no body)]

"and I am somewhat surprised at the number needing to register"

That's what struck me as particularly noteworthy about this story too. Much more so than the system crashing 90 mins before the deadline.

[offal]

Sod that.

If you were writing a comment for the guardian - I would be inclined to agree with you.

This issue was *not* voters registering late - it was entirely because of an inadequate infrastructure. There's a whole bunch of reasons for an inadequate infrastructure, but for the vast majority of the time - it's corner cutting.

Not just in terms of inadequate hardware, badly written software - but the expertise needed to identify these. People like you and me.

[strum]

>why did you leave it it till 10:30pm on the last possible day to finally decide to register to vote?

I can't help feeling that it was no coincidence that this happened after an extended TV appearance by Farage...

[Banksy]

Retards

Simon Harris above is much more charitable than me. If people are really interested in voting they should be registered anyway and not leave it until the last minute to attempt to register. I don't see it as a failure of the system. Corbyn is a f**kwit and of course the deadline should not be extended.

[Ellis Birt 1]

Did they use the same consultants as HMRC?

Sounds like the annual tax return deadline debarcle!

Maybe gov.uk should think about using containers and dynamically spinning up instances in services like Azure and AWS when demand dictates.

[Anonymous Coward]

if I were cynical

I would say that the government expected this crash, hoping to wake up those still on the sidelines. After all, most of those trying to register yesterday were probably the stayers. And to extend the deadline, at a price of being ridiculed is... a small price, really. In a way, to continue with conspiracy theory, such a crash would have been a master stroke, proving on one hand that our dear governement is so incompentent, it can't even organize a proper exit vote, let alone managing on its own once we're out. And the exit lot can't argue too hard for NOT extending the deadline, even though they know most of the lot would be the stayers, because they're trying to show that we can easily manage (the universe and everything) on our own. Well, clearly we can't ;).

But, with a rule of the thumb (dumb-dumb) and cynic/tinfoil hat off, it was probably just the usual lack of forward thinking about human nature in the one to midnight situation. We're too incompetent to hatch a successful plot, and are more or less the complete opposite of Ian Banks (nb, died two years ago tomorrow), v. his Hydrogen Sonata ;)

[phuzz]

This is one of those rare times when using a cloud based system that could spin up an extra bunch of servers on short notice would have been a good idea.

[Dan 55]

Why weren't they using G-Cloud already?

Or, worse still, maybe they were.

[fajensen]

Bug - ot Feature?

Could one not use $BigData to analyse which visitors the site should "crash" for? I mean, democracy these days is mostly about making life safe for corporations.

[noboard]

Hmmmm

So Corbyn was checking the site was working until the end and we can probably presume others were doing the same. Sooooo did the site crash because so many people were checking it was up and had nothing to do with the amount of people trying to register?

[a cynic writes...]

I'd imagine it was two groups....

(1) The lot who weren't registered, decided to register and finally woke up to the deadline. Expect to see them arrive at polling stations at 9.59pm and then throw a strop when they can't get in.

(2) The lot who registered months ago and had a wee panic since they haven't had their polling card yet.

I think group 2 will be larger.

In other arse-elbow news last week it came out that people not entitled to vote had been issued polling cards.

[John G Imrie]

Re: I'd imagine it was two groups....

I think we could do with a different web site for checking if you are registered or not. That might relieve some of the pressure.

[phuzz]

Re: I'd imagine it was two groups....

If you turn up at 21:59:59 then you get to vote, even if there's a queue and you can't physically get into your polling station until after 22:00.

It doesn't matter what time you turn up, a vote is still a vote.

[tiggity]

Cut the late registrants some slack

Because term times?

This is the time of year when many undergrad courses coming to an end, exams & other to a deadline work.

Many of these students possibly changing address after term ends.

With exams on their mind, vote registration at address they will be in for late June vote could well be not exactly the most important thing on their minds (e.g. shall I do a few minutes more revision for my finals or shall I register online a few days in advance)

Would be interested to know how many "last minute registrations" are students.

Additionally, vote registration has been publicised, but a lot of the previously unregistered might have missed the "publicity" & only noticed in the last few days as publicity of registration closing only reached peak intensity over the last few days (it's very easy these days for people to consume little "mainstream" media where much publicity was)

Maybe some people had started earlier but found they needed time to discover required information (e.g. NI number) & so revisited teh site a day or 2 after first visit

And obviously, given a deadline lots of people wait until it is nearly reached, just because humans are a bit contrary & prioritise lots of other stuff over some distant "quick & easy" task.

[MOV r0,r0]

Re: Cut the late registrants some slack

Tim Farron was on BBC Radio Guardian FM Today Programme this morning saying your vote should devalue over time, like old milk in the fridge and that young people votes are better than old people votes because old people are about dead anyway or something.

Sorry, I tend not to pay too much attention to what Liberals say these days as I can't hear them over the sound of my own derisory laughter. Must be my old voter hearing.

[Roland6]

Re: Cut the late registrants some slack

With exams on their mind, vote registration at address they will be in for late June vote could well be not exactly the most important thing on their minds

Solution, register at parents address and opt for a postal vote. Naturally, doing this means that the parents will get the reminder to update their registration in January (I think) and simply do the honours for all members of the household...

[Brenda McViking]

Re: Cut the late registrants some slack

Indeed.

Whilst I was registered for a postal vote (have been for years) My flatmate only realised he wasn't registered when he didn't get a poll card through the door when everyone else did. They arrived last Friday. I also note that if the peak was around 22:15, that is suspiciously close to the BBC 10 o'clock news announcement that it was the final day to register.

People will behave like people. That black art pseudoscience, psychology, apparently shows there is a preference for organisation or spontaneity, which dictates that a large proportion of the population will indeed leave it to the last minute. Just as the other large proportion will have sorted it out months ago, and are now loudly denigrating those who aren't wired the same.

This is not new, it is not surprising, and those blaming those who do what they do naturally and register at T-5 minutes should levy their ire just as much as those who had planned the system - they too, had no excuse for not thinking this would happen and not implementing the necessary elastic capacity. The difference between these two groups, is that one were paid to do this, and the others were the reason they were employed in the first place. Hell, registering to vote should finish 2 days after the announced deadline.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Cut the late registrants some slack

@ Brenda McViking

> those who had planned the system - they too, had no excuse for not thinking this would happen and not implementing the necessary elastic capacity

The voter registration system went live in June 2014. Given we have had a Scottish referendum and a general election since - both of which it coped with - it would seem to have been sized appropriately. Criticising the system's designers for not foreseeing something as significant as an EU referendum two years ahead of it being announced is unreasonable.

Could they have upped the capacity as a change request once the EU referendum was announced? Technically I'm sure they could, but that would require a project and a budget and suitable advance warning from the Government. What do you think happened?

[sysconfig]

This is due to unprecedented demand.

You don't say. Of course there's no precedent for a Brexit referendum, because there's never been one.

That said, how hard can it be to make an educated guess about the capacity needed? (EDIT: and/or design it properly so that it scales?)

Can anybody please name any GDS project that hasn't failed spectacularly (or is about to)?

[Simon Harris]

Re: This is due to unprecedented demand.

Since there was a general election only one year ago, I would have thought that might give some clues about registration capacity needed.

[Ken Hagan]

Re: This is due to unprecedented demand.

To estimate capacity you only need an estimate of the current population and knowledge of how many have already registered. Which don't they know?

[Lotaresco]

Re: This is due to unprecedented demand.

"To estimate capacity you only need an estimate of the current population and knowledge of how many have already registered. Which don't they know?"

Please don't ever give up your day job and decide to get involved in capacity planning. You also need to know, or to estimate, what proportion of those not registered will be bothered to register - a very difficult number to estimate, and you need to know when those people are likely to want to register.

Do you honestly believe that the system should have been sized to permit all 7 million unregistered voters to register at 1 minute to midnight?

[veti]

Re: This is due to unprecedented demand.

Oh yes there has, there was a Brexit referendum in 1975.

Just sayin'.

[kmac499]

A Good IT manager would have whipped out a credit card and upped their subscription to AWS,Azure, Google Cloud.

Assuming of course that a service that was expected to have a massive peak and with a political 'Failure is not an option' status had back up hosting, even if only to capture details to be processed securely later.

[Bawsnia2]

I can see the headlines now:

1000's of UK voters details stolen because of incompetent IT managers decision to use cloud based service with no proper security audit, change control etc etc.

Or:

1000's of UK voters details stolen because of incompetent foreign IT cloud provider with poor security model, immigrant staff stealing data. Only noticed by hero Gov IT manager blah blah blah,

Depending on the paper yu are reading.

[eJ2095]

lastminutue.com

are taking over the hosting.... ;-0

[Miss Lincolnshire]

If you are so stupid that you leave registering to vote until two hours before the deadline then you really don't deserve the vote in the first place.

Corbyn would be better employed campaigning on the issue and trying to mobilise those that are bright enough to have registered than doing his usual Spartist trick of sniping, sneeringly from the sidelines.

[Dominion]

Too stupid to vote

Anyone who left it until 10:40pm on deadline day to register is quite frankly, too stupid to be allowed to vote.

[Lars]

Re: Too stupid to vote

As stupid as anyone who enters the train station at 10:40pm when the train is scheduled to leave at 11:00pm.

[Simon Harris]

Re: Too stupid to vote

If the train's a Eurostar, then that would be pretty stupid - last time I went through the ticket barrier at St. Pancras for one, the woman in front of me was turned away because she had less than 30 minutes to go before her departure.

[captain veg]

Re: Too stupid to vote

The 30 minute rule on Eurostar is only for the plebs in "standard" class. But in any case, it is clearly written on the ticket. No one said that the deadline for voter registration was 22.40, did they?

-A.

[Lotaresco]

Re: Too stupid to vote

As stupid as someone who enters an airport terminal at 10:40PM when the flight is due to depart at 11:00PM.

[captain veg]

Re: Too stupid to vote

> As stupid as someone who enters an airport terminal at 10:40PM when the flight is due to depart at 11:00PM.

Yes, well the flight "referendum" isn't actually leaving for another couple of weeks yet.

-A.

[Dominion]

Re: Too stupid to vote

There'll be another train, possibly tomorrow. There won't be another vote,

[Ken Hagan]

Re: Too stupid to vote

You could have registered months ago. Try catching a train or plane six months early and see how you get on.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Too stupid to vote

Ahhh, you can catch a train/bus/airplane 6 months early - you just get there six months early

[Teddy the Bear]

But loads of people were de-registered from voting...

... and only when they check do they realise this is the case, so maybe some of the extra load came from that:

http://indy100.independent.co.uk/article/all-these-people-just-lost-the-vote--WyYlMY3Hax

[Anonymous Coward]

Crazy idea for the future..Advertise the final day to register as 1 day prior to the real deadline. Site crashes, due to people leaving it until last minute. Oh go on then, have an extra 24hrs to do it.. :p

[Missing Semicolon]

There's a theory

.. that the Cameron/Farage debate stimulated a lot of registrations....

[Lotaresco]

Re: There's a theory

".. that the Cameron/Farage debate stimulated a lot of registrations...."

It stimulated a lot of dry heaving here.

[Crisp]

Why isn't this cloud based?

And why didn't additional servers come online as demand increased?

[jonfr]

All the visa applications

Once the UK is out of the EU, all the people from the UK have to start filling out visa applications before they go on holiday to Spain, Portugal, France and so on.

It is going to next to impossible for people from UK to move to other country in Europe, being outside EU and all.

[Mephistro]

Re: All the visa applications (@ jonfr)

"...all the people from the UK have to start filling out visa applications before they go on holiday"

To the best of my knowledge, none of the countries you named requests visas from tourists, for quite obvious reasons.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: All the visa applications (@ jonfr)

Of course those countries request visas from tourists from some countries. They even have a special name for it - the Schengen Visa. If UK left the EU, maybe it would continue in its visa-exempt status or maybe it wouldn't. Like so much else in this "debate", nobody knows.

[Mephistro]

Re: All the visa applications (@ jonfr)

Please allow me to clarify my comment:

The countries listed in the parent comment request visas from tourists from some 'conflictive countries' - i.e. countries that are usual sources of illegal immigration-, not from European countries -regardless of whether they are in the EU or not- or from 'Western' countries. If they requested -most- tourists to obtain visas, they would be shooting themselves in the foot, as tourism is an important source of income for these countries.

Brits trying to migrate into those countries are a different matter, though.

Disclaimer: I'm Spanish and I consider the Brexit a bad thing both for the UK and for the rest of the EU, but the 'visa for tourists' argument doesn't make any sense.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: All the visa applications (@ jonfr)

The US requires visas and seems to do okay with tourism. Every Caribbean country I've visited needed a visa and relies pretty exclusively on tourism.

[Mephistro]

Re: All the visa applications (@ jonfr)

"The US requires visas and seems to do okay with tourism."

Hmmm... let's see:

Number of tourists visiting the USA every year: 23.89 million people per year (2007 estimate)

Population of the USA: 322 million people (world rank: 3rd) (2014 estimate)

Number of tourists visiting Spain every year: 59.19 million people per year (2007 estimate)

Population of Spain: 47.3 million people (world rank: 30th) (2014 estimate)

Number of tourists visiting France Every year: 81.94 million people per year (2007 estimate)

Population of France: 64.1 million people (world rank: 21st) (2014 estimate)

So... not even in the same league!

(Source: Wolfram Alpha)

And regarding the Caribbean countries, I visited one of them a few years ago. I obtained the visa through the Internets, with minimal paperwork, and my visa took less than a week to be processed and approved. Some friends visited another Caribbean country and they only needed they passport. YMMV, of course, as conditions may have changed since then and other countries may have different rules.

As an added bonus, nobody asked me if I planned to kill the president of Coconutstan!. ;-)

[Mephistro]

Re: All the visa applications (@ jonfr)

A correction:

Even when I asked Wolfram Alpha the number of tourists, it gave me the number of total visitors.

For France and Spain, the number of tourists is ~80% of the number of total visitors. For the USA, the percentage of tourists is ~40%. Which nicely reinforces my point.

[Vic]

Re: All the visa applications (@ jonfr)

the 'visa for tourists' argument doesn't make any sense.

That doesn't mean it wouldn't happen, of course...

I've been listening to various members of the Exit camp on the radio over the last few days, and I have noticed one remarkable thing: whenever confronted with a potential problem due to leaving the EU, they carefully and patiently lay out a clear argument that the problem would not occur because that would involve the EU being entirely unreasonable.

And yet, just a few seconds previously, they also made the point that we should get out of the EU becuase it does behave unreasonably...

Vic.

[Barry Rueger]

Hire Amazon*

Seriously. Just write them a cheque and be done with it.

They've built a business on being available 24/7/365, before, during, and after peak shopping days, in the most consumerist country on the planet.

You want reliable uptime? Hire someone who's already succeeding.

*example. Quite sure there are others.

Query: was the failed registration IT internal, or outsourced to the lowest bidder?

[Lotaresco]

Re: Hire Amazon*

Umm hmmm and how do you get around the government rules that prohibit off-shoring of personal data?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Hire Amazon*

As someone who works in healthcare and is responsible for following Department of Health rules surrounding use of personal data, I can confirm that countries in the EU and/or EEC are considered reasonable places to store personal data. If Amazon have a DC in .ie, that would do fine.

I would expect that rule to change should we vote to leave the EU.

[Lotaresco]

Re: Hire Amazon*

"countries in the EU and/or EEC are considered reasonable places to store personal data."

Yes, sure, if the IAO authorises such storage and provided that all the other hoops are jumped through. I doubt that all other government departments would take the same view as DoH. DWP and HMRC for example are notoriously twitchy about any suggestion of off-shoring data.

[hplasm]

Re: Hire Amazon*

"Umm hmmm and how do you get around the government rules that prohibit off-shoring of personal data?"

Same way the Govt usually gets away with it.

[Lotaresco]

Last minute registrations with the same pathetic excuses...

... as the idiots to be seen screaming abuse at Easyjet staff when the said idiots realise that when someone says there's a deadline that they really mean there's a deadline. I've seen people screaming that they "Were delayed by security but ran all the way to the gate" who mysteriously had time to visit the duty free shop.

This referendum has been publicised for weeks. The notification to register went out in January (although voters should have registered last year - renewal is now automatic). That's five months during which the idiots could have registered, but apparently they thought it would be a good idea to leave it until 10PM on the day that registration closes.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why did people leave it to the last min to register. Cant blame it all on the Government if everyone registers on the last day all at the same time.

[Triggerfish]

Deadline

It seems a lot of people here, seem to think deadline actually means some unspecified time before the actual time stated as a deadline. Why is that?

[Ken Hagan]

Re: Deadline

Registration has been open for about 400,000 minutes and yet some people left it until the last 20. Leaving something until the last 0.005% of the available time really isn't smart. At the risk of stating the obvious, it leaves you with very few options if your internet connection is down at the critical moment.

[Triggerfish]

Re: Deadline

It may not be smart, but a deadline is still a deadline.

[Anonymous Coward]

Unprecedented

Not really.

This is government IT services, they should expect by now that their user base is potentially the whole population.

Additionally, there is some precedent in previous large scale government IT services failing due to demand. Unplanned for maybe, not budgeted for perhaps... but not unprecedented.

There are a few phrases i would like to see banned from the vocabulary of politicians and "unprecedented" is one of them. All these little lies they tell just shows their distain for our intelligence.

[Anonymous Coward]

Morons...

If people are leaving their registration to the last minute then that person clearly cannot be trusted with such an important decision and doesn't deserve a vote.

I have always said Polling Stations should be in a Maze to keep the great unwashed from making a decision purely because Benedict Cummerbund or Keira 'Twice nightly' Knightly says so.

Now the integrity of the referendum result is in question, not just because of this omnishambles, but also because of the vast number of EU nationals who have been sent polling cards by mistake. Whatever the result we're going to have huge social unrest this July as the losing side kick off, a new PM within weeks and years of uncertainly that will shag the economy until it looks like a punched lasagne (Stay OR leave!!)

This is why we can't have nice things!! Fuck!

I despair....

[MR J]

Until the cause is identified then you cant say for sure that lower-demand would have helped anything.

But IMHO it would have been wise to push people to register for this early, stating something along the lines of (Leaving it to the last moment means the server might not be able to process your request).

When people hear that there is a discounts on phones or computers they don't ask when the last day is so they can go in and buy them then, they just go and buy it "while there is still time".

[Lotaresco]

IT professionals in favour of Brexit?

I'm astonished that there are any involved in IT who would want Brexit. The "Leave" campaign contains people whose companies use lots of IT professionals and IT staff costs have been a sticking point for some sectors of commerce and all of government for a long time. Part of their problem has been that EU rules on immigration have prevented mass recruitment in India, Hong Kong and other parts of the world outside Europe that have people with good skills who are able to speak English to a high standard. They can offshore but that doesn't go well in all cases and bringing in staff to work in the UK without time differences is very attractive.

Brexit will inevitably mean mass recruitment of lower waged IT staff and the depression of wages in the industry. As an IT professional vote for Brexit and you're a turkey voting for Christmas, Thanksgiving and International Turkey Burger day.

[Lotaresco]

But IMHO it would have been wise to push people to register for this early

Which is what the electoral commission did. They were even briefing during radio news (multiple channels) on Monday morning stating that leaving registration until the last minute would be unwise since that may mean that people would be unable to register in time for the deadline. It's difficult to see how they could have been any clearer about the risks, and let's not forget everyone of voting age is obliged by law to register not five seconds before a deadline, but in Autumn of the preceding year and to notify the electoral registration officer if their details change.

Here's the advice given about registration:

"With 'rolling registration' in force, it means that the register is updated every month. However, applications need to be received several weeks before publication to guarantee inclusion "

"An annual canvass still takes place every autumn to ensure the register is up-to-date. There is no monthly update during September, October or November during the annual canvass period when all households have to register. A new Register is usually published on 1 December."

Isn't that clear?

[Patrician]

Lets be honest here; if you've left it tot the last minute of the last available day to register to vote you'v only got yourself to blame. It's not as if this referendum has been kept quiet now is it?