Without trying to get overly political, the United Kingdom will soon hold a vote on its membership of the EU. As you can imagine, both the leave and remain campaigns have been embroiled in a heated debate which resulted in each side employing scare tactics. Clearly, this is one of the most important votes of a generation which could determine the future of the UK and its relationship with Scotland, and maybe even Europe as a political entity. Whatever your political affiliation, it’s vital to vote and have your say in the process.
The UK government configured a website to allow citizens to register for when the vote takes place in a few weeks. Unfortunately, the network infrastructure wasn’t able to deal with what the government calls an “unprecedented demand” during the last few hours before registration closed. As a result, UK residents couldn’t register to vote and were greeted with the following message:
According to the government’s data website, 525,000 people applied to register during the day. 170,00 of these were aged 25 to 34, while 130,000 were under the age of 25. A further 100,000 fell between the 35 to 44 age bracket. At peak time, 50,711 people were trying to register at the same time and it’s unclear how many of these were unable to sign up. Surely this is incompetence on the government’s parts because they should have expected a huge surge of traffic on the final day. Many people tend to wait until the final moment before registering and prioritise other elements of their daily lives. Hopefully, the voting registration will be extended and the government is looking into ways to make this a possibility. Once again, this is another example of a government website failing to have the correct infrastructure.
