Move-On.org
calls on Sharpton to save Online primary from disaster
Metro
WASHINGTON -- Activists staging a massive
online Democratic presidential primary turned to presidential
candidate Al Sharpton to iron out a few technical problems
with their Online voting Website. It appears as though
the system was rigged to prevent women, minorities and
blondes from voting. Although the system was only down
for an hour, the inconvenience angered many.
About 50 people were able to cast electronic
ballots for Democratic candidates on the advocacy group's
Web site before the system crashed around 11:15am EDT.
"We had a much greater load than
we expected all at once," said Wes Boyd, president
of the MoveOn.org's political action committee, which
organized the vote. "We made a phone call to the
Reverend Al Sharpton who wrote a special prayer to make
the voting program more efficient, and within an hour,
most of the problems were solved."
By 12:30 p.m., the site was back up
and running, except for the blondes, Boyd said. The
‘blondes problem’ was fixed later that afternoon.
The primary began at midnight Monday
and was to remainthrough midnight Wednesday. Boyd
said he would extend the voting period for women and
minorities for at least another 20 minutes to account
for the glitch. “The blondes however, are just
out of luck”, said Boyd.
All nine Democratic presidential candidates
are participating in the virtual primary, which is not
part of the Democratic Party's official primary process,
and have encouraged their supporters to register at
MoveOn.org and vote. Boyd expects hundreds of thousands
of votes to be cast, with the winner to be announced
Friday.
Officials in Joe Lieberman’s
campaign said they received several calls and e-mails
Tuesday from supporters who got an error message after
trying to cast electronic ballots. As it turns out,
the system blocked out the blonde candidates as well.
"It's been problematic,"
said Sen. Lieberman "We've heard from dozens of
supporters who have either signed up to get an e-mail
and haven't gotten it or can't get online or can't get
on the site."
While Sharpton is participating
in the primary, his campaign insists he had nothing
to do with the unfortunate technical problems.
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