SB1 rules, extra traffic caused Election Day website issues, Travis Co. Clerk's Office says

AUSTIN, Texas - The Travis County Clerk's Office says that their site was down for about 40 minutes on Election Day due to two extra livestreaming cameras and added site traffic when polls closed.

The clerk's office says that because SB 1 requires video surveillance of all areas containing voted ballots to be livestreamed to the public during the election period, the office had been running four cameras during the early voting period. On Election Day, two additional cameras had been added to the ballot storage vault and the ballot programming room.

Because of this and additional traffic to the website at 7 p.m. Tuesday night when polls officially closed, the clerk's office says that its server's resources were "overwhelmed" leading to the site not working.

The clerk's office also says it immediately redirected traffic to the county's main site to host the election results and that by the time the first run of results were posted, the situation had been remedied and the site was back up and running.

"This was our first election streaming these required videos and we now know how to best manage the rapid increase in traffic and how to best maintain the website," the clerk's office said in a release. 

The site issues did not impact the results being processed, says the clerk's office, adding that Election Day returns were processed and published in record time.

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