Elections, the flop of the Region's official data: "blocking" system, slow and results uploaded by hand

Sier, regional electoral information system: this is where the problem lies that causes delays in the official results of the elections for the president and the regional council of Sardinia. The counting began at 7, over 10 hours later on the Region's website, special elections section, the data of 773 sections out of 1844 were uploaded. Nobody from Sassari, just a third from Cagliari.

In the meantime, however, the major municipalities (even those that are blocked by the Region) are churning out increasingly consolidated numbers on their institutional websites.

What happened? To understand it is necessary to ask the regional electoral office, which illustrates a system of cross-checks that turn into a bottleneck. Or in a cap, at worst.

According to what has been explained, each polling station concludes the counting and draws up two minutes. Each one reports the votes for the president, those for the individual councilor and, again, the result of the individual lists. One document is sent to the Court of Appeal, the other to the Municipality.

And it is here, in the building of each administration, that the second step begins: a specially trained official, according to the Region's electoral office, must upload the results (not only the votes for the president, but all) onto the Sier, seat by seat. The first hitch is explained by the mayor of Quartu, Graziano Milia, who spoke live on Radiolina: «The loading is manual, given by given: a cumbersome procedure that takes up a lot of time». Easier to insert updates on the Municipality's institutional website. And this is done. Thus the first mystery was solved. But it's not over.

Because Sier doesn't accept everything. Better: it doesn't let the flow pass without filters. It is "blocking", as explained by the director of the Region's electoral and statistics service, Sergio Loddo. In the sense that «when it detects anomalies it does not send the data to the site» . And for long hours the officials, this time from the Region, saw Alert signals: problems, in short. «Which could be a discrepancy between votes for the president and the lists, also taking into account the split vote», continues the director of the Service, «but also the inconsistencies on the number of male or female voters». And until the "busillis" is resolved, the data will not be published on the Region's website. «Because what we put online», is the explanation, «must be certain».

It is to be hoped, as is evidently the case, that there are no errors even on the institutional websites of the various Municipalities which, although slow, seem lightning fast when compared with that of the Region. Yet this is the official explanation from the Region. So the node must be another: otherwise the Sassari interface of the Region's website, which is zero after 10 and a half hours, should be full of "Alerts". Instead, Palazzo Ducale, on its portal, gives the count almost as concluded. As happens in other centers on the island. So much so that while the national leaders of the centre-left parties are at the airport to embark for Sardinia to celebrate Alessandra Todde's victory, when there are a few minutes to 6pm the Region's numbers still tell of a head-to-head with the centre-right in the lead .