For the past hour, I've been trying without success to access election results on the Elections B.C. Web site.

Like many British Columbians, I want to see who won the Vancouver-Fairview and Vancouver-Burrard by-elections.

Sometimes, I get to the Elections B.C. home page, but the by-election results page is still inaccessible.

I've just been notified by another employee of the Georgia Straight that he can't get onto the site either.

Shortly after the polls closed, I reported in the news crawl on this site (right-hand side of Straight.com) that New Democrat Spencer Herbert had opened up a significant lead in Vancouver-Burrard over B.C. Liberal Arthur Griffiths.

I haven't been able to post anything else  for an hour because Elections B.C. has somehow managed to screw things up on the very night when people want to get to  its site. These results should be posted on the home page because this is the reason why 99.9 percent of visitors are going to the site tonight.

If things are this bad on the night of two by-elections, I can only imagine what's in store for us on the night of the general election next May.

Elections B.C. claims that there is a problem with the host of the Web site. The staff hope to have everything fixed as soon as possible.

Elections B.C. also did a woeful job of informing residents of the two constituencies where polling stations were located today.

Incorrect information was published for the locations of four voting locations in Vancouver-Fairview.

In the United States, these techniques are commonly used to suppress the vote. In this instance, given that the chief electoral officer is an officer of the legislature,  I'm chalking it up to incompetence.

Regardless, I hope a legislative committee starts poking into this after the results are released. Something has to be done to prevent this type of nonsense from occurring on election night, 2009.