State election Web site flooded

Anyone who tried to get election results from the secretary of state's election Web page on Tuesday evening couldn't.

Chief Deputy Secretary of State Rene Parker said the state site crashed after it was flooded with thousands of Internet information seekers.

They did so after Voter News Service, which was supposed to provide election results nationwide to a variety of outlets, itself crashed.

She said two major issues put the secretary of state's Web page at the center of attention: the ballot question seeking to legalize use and possession of small amounts of marijuana and the race between Jon Porter and Dario Herrera for the newly created Congressional District 3.

The result was 311,662 "hits" on the Web site by everyone from news organizations to political groups to curious pot smokers.

"And that's just the ones who got on," said Parker. "That doesn't capture all the people who tried."

Ironically, one of the victims of the crash was Secretary of State Dean Heller, who was in Las Vegas, not his Carson City main office, and like everyone else unable to get any information from site.

The server crashed shortly after 7 p.m. when the polls closed and, until well after 9 p.m., had no election results to show those who managed to reach the page electronically.

"The server didn't have the capacity to deal with all that traffic," said Parker.

She said the Legislature approved the purchase of a new and larger Web server, but that was delayed by the state's budget crunch.

She said major changes will be made to make sure there is no crash in the next election cycle.

The Secretary of State's Office also reported almost 60 percent of Nevada's registered voters cast ballot's in Tuesday's election. That's 514,649 voters, or about 100,000 less than in the 2000 presidential election.