Highly Radioactive situations and nuclear applications in general cause great trouble with any digital device, let alone complex Wireless communication, due to the fact that the particles being emmited can flip bits on your Microprocessors and make the whole thing break down. Fully analog devices are used for control applications in nuclear plants for their reason, there is likely something like that g ing on with this setup

That is how it works, also electoral votes for each state are not scaled to the population of that state which means low population (often red) states get a disproportionate influence on national elections