Every year hundreds of Maricopa residents voluntarily turn their mouths into miniature infernos. The reason for this is an event simply known as Salsa Fest, a competition of all things spicy and good chips. Citizens turn into critics to decide the best, most unusual, and hottest salsa. March 25th was the thirteenth time the city of Maricopa has hosted the event. However, this year was the first time that CAC entered a salsa into the competition. Despite the best efforts of the college’s representative chef, the entry was denied victory before the event had even begun.

A technological error prevented people from being able to vote for the salsa that CAC submitted. According to Jennifer Brown, assistant to the city manager, there was an error with the system used to vote. “What happened is we have an app and you have to have so much time for the app to get approved. We thought we had all of the correct information in the app but we missed one of the salsa chefs so it’s (CAC’s salsa) not in our app and you’re not able to vote on it.” Because the mistake was not caught in time CAC was not a part of the official ballot.

Brown apologized multiple times for the omission and said that she and her associates take responsibility for the mistake. She even mentioned an attempt to remedy the error. “We debated whether or not we not go back to paper ballots but it was just too quick of a turn around to make it fair for everybody.” CAC was the only booth to be affected by this oversight.

Chef Gardner, the head of the culinary department at Maricopa campus, said not being able to vote was the low point of the entire event. He even came prepared with a mango-based recipe, which is over a century old. The salsa had a fruity undertone to balance the dominating spice. Gardner’s intentions “to promote the culinary arts program and to do something good for the community” were still fulfilled but he was still disappointed that he was denied the chance to compete. “Although we spent all this time and effort to make the salsa, no one was able to vote for us,” he complained. Despite every effort, the best laid plans of citizens and students went astray thanks to technology.