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Kent County official vote count uninterrupted when public reporting system goes offline

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Kent County
Kent County seal

Kent County officials investigating what knocked its public election reporting system offline as precincts were reporting results Election night.

ElectionReporting.com is a service provided by Kent County at accesskent.com.

“For the public for interactive use and understanding the election results down to the precinct level.”

Lisa Posthumus Lyons is Kent County Clerk.

“You may have noticed that was taken offline around Midnight.”

That’s Midnight on election night as precincts were reporting. Data the public, campaigns, candidates and the media rely on.

“Rather than leave that site live with inaccurate numbers, because they all kind of zeroed out for jurisdiction that we know had previously been reported, we took that site offline and reverted to using PDF reports from our official election management system.”

A backup plan providing updates once every hour. By 10:30 Wednesday morning, the system was back online. What went wrong is still being investigated by the county’s information technology department. For anyone concerned about election integrity.

“It’s in no way connected to the tabulation effort or our election management system.”

Posthumus Lyons makes it clear; ElectionReporting.com is a public facing website, and the transmission and reporting of results for official purposes was uninterrupted.

Patrick joined WGVU Public Media in December, 2008 after eight years of investigative reporting at Grand Rapids' WOOD-TV8 and three years at WYTV News Channel 33 in Youngstown, Ohio. As News and Public Affairs Director, Patrick manages our daily radio news operation and public interest television programming. An award-winning reporter, Patrick has won multiple Michigan Associated Press Best Reporter/Anchor awards and is a three-time Academy of Television Arts & Sciences EMMY Award winner with 14 nominations.