Minnesota GOP's virtual state convention postponed after server issues
The Minnesota Republican Party's state convention, being held online due to the COVID-19 outbreak, was shelved on Saturday due to technical difficulties.
Minnesota GOP chair Jennifer Carnahan says that the convention was unable to convene after the "servers of our voting partner were overwhelmed."
Carnahan says this was "likely" the result of a "malicious attack on our process," with her description of the problems suggesting a possible distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack, which disrupts normal traffic to a server, service or network by flooding it with internet traffic at greater levels than it can handle.
"Attacking voting integrity is unacceptable," Carnahan said, noting the issue has been reported to Edina Police, the FBI, and Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon.
In a statement, the Minnesota GOP said: "Our vendor witnessed an unprecedented spike in volume they cannot attribute to normal use of any kind.
"The Republican Party of Minnesota will be working with our voting vendor and law enforcement to investigate and determine the source of this disruption."
Party leaders had intended to use the convention to vote on endorsements for its candidates in the race for Tina Smith's U.S. Senate seat, as well as select delegates for Republican National Convention this summer.
Former U.S. Rep. Jason Lewis is the frontrunner for the GOP nomination to face Smith.
Per the Star Tribune, Carnahan said that the convention would be rescheduled.
