Renzo Downey
Florida’s voter registration portal is down after a high volume of visitors crashed the website Monday afternoon and evening.
The deadline to register in time for the November General Election is midnight.
Secretary of State Laurel Lee tweeted the website was fully back online within minutes of the initial hiccups.
“Due to high volume, for about 15 minutes, some users experienced delays while trying to register,” Lee said just before 6 p.m. “We have increased capacity. You can register until midnight tonight. Thank you to those who immediately brought this to our attention.”
But an hour later, the website was still showing errors as some people tried to connect to the website, RegistertoVoteFlorida.gov.
The Department of State launched the voter registration website in 2017. In October 2018, the site experienced difficulties the day before the registration deadline, and did so again in March following the presidential primary.
Department critics say officials, including Gov. Ron DeSantis, should have anticipated an influx of hopeful voters trying to complete their registration online.
“The voter registration deadline in Florida is just hours away, and the online voter registration website is broken,” Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried tweeted after the site remained down. “This is unacceptable [Gov. Ron DeSantis]. Fix it now.”
Fried is Florida’s lone statewide-elected Democrat.
“History is repeating itself, and Florida voters continue to bear the burden of ineptitude as a result of negligence,” an All Voting is Local spokesman said in a statement. “The online voter registration website has a history of crashing just before or on the deadline when Floridians can register.”
The organization added that the Department should extend the deadline.
“No aspiring voter should be silenced because the state can’t maintain a functioning website,” they wrote.
Officials including Rep. Anna Eskamani were a part of the initial wave of people alerting the Secretary and the Department to the glitches. The Orlando Democrat joined the call to extend the deadline to make up for delays.
OVR is online and working. Due to high volume, for about 15 minutes, some users experienced delays while trying to register. We have increased capacity. You can register until midnight tonight.
Thank you to those who immediately brought this to our attention.— Laurel M. Lee (@FLSecofState) October 5, 2020
5 comments
James Robert Miles
October 5, 2020 at 8:45 pm
Typical voter suppression by the GOP extremist party! It’s the only way that they can win!!
Susan
October 5, 2020 at 10:05 pm
The system is still down and it’s 10pm.
Ian
October 5, 2020 at 11:10 pm
I went on the website around 8:15 pm tonight and it was working fine. Tried it again just now (11:10 pm). Still working fine.
Jason
October 5, 2020 at 11:23 pm
The site is down right now at 11:22PM.
Tjb
October 6, 2020 at 11:56 am
Remember when DeSantis attacked Obama when there were some downtime with the Affordable Care website. Like to let Fathead Ron to be aware that he has issues with our Unemployment website along with Voters Registration site.
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