Renzo Downey
Secretary of State Laurel Lee has reopened voter registration until 7 p.m. Tuesday following the online portal’s crash Monday.
After meeting with Gov. Ron DeSantis Tuesday morning to brief him on the disruption to voting registration that began hours before Monday’s midnight deadline, Lee said she was “exploring all options” to remedy those who couldn’t sign up. Some hopeful registrants couldn’t connect to the Department of State’s online registration portal beginning that afternoon.
An hour and a half after her initial announcement Tuesday, Lee announced the portal would be open from noon until 7 p.m.
“We are working with local Supervisors of Elections and the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles to ensure that all eligible registrants have the ability to submit a voter registration application by 7:00 p.m. this evening,” Lee said.
Despite the Secretary of State tweeting that the website was back online, a high volume of traffic meant most people trying to connect received error messages. The website received 1.1 million requests per hour, which Lee called unprecedented.
“We will work with our state and federal law-enforcement partners to ensure this was not a deliberate act against the voting process,” she said.
On top of online applications, registration is reopened until 7 p.m. at county supervisor of elections offices, local tax collectors’ offices and Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles’ driver’s license offices. Paper applications postmarked by Tuesday will also be accepted.
During a press conference in The Villages Tuesday, DeSantis defended the state’s online registration portal.
“You can have the best site in the world. Sometimes there are hiccups on it,” he said.
The noon to 7 p.m. window is comparable to the seven hours the website struggled Monday. Keeping registration open during work hours would let live people help applicants, the Governor added.
DeSantis and Lee are working to extend the hours of those offices to further aid potential registrants.
“If you are NOT registering to vote, we ask that you do your part for your fellow Floridians and please do not try to access RegisterToVoteFlorida.gov during this time and drive up traffic to the site,” Lee said.
A bipartisan group of leaders in Florida called extending registration the right move.
Democrats, including Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, lambasted Lee and DeSantis for the system’s failures. And Fried, Florida’s lone statewide-elected Democrat, called on the Governor to extend voting registration by 24 hours.
“This is about constitutional freedoms, not about politics — it’s about the fundamental right of everyone who is eligible to register to vote, regardless of political party, to make their voice heard at the ballot box,” Fried said. “It is the State’s duty to ensure the website works as anticipated, to allow Floridians to exercise their constitutional rights. With hours taken away from the deadline due to errors, we have witnessed a potential violation of those rights.”
Initially, Lee said the site was down for about 15 minutes before the department increased capacity for the website. However, that increase was not enough.
“The State should have a contingency plan in place for an error of this magnitude, which may have prevented thousands of Floridians from exercising their right to vote in the coming election,” Fried said. “The deadline exists for a reason — and it is the right of every person in Florida who chooses to register to vote, to do so up until that deadline.”
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.
The ACLU of Florida was among the groups calling for a registration deadline extension.
“Florida’s online voter registration system has a suspect history of crashing just before key deadlines,” the organization tweeted. “[Gov. DeSantis] & [Lee] knew the website was faulty and did nothing.”
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden called the extension “a win for our democracy” in a tweet.
“This election is too important to sit out,” he said.
Following the seven-hour extension, other voting rights organizations filed a lawsuit requesting would-be voters get two days to apply.
DeSantis also addressed fears about vote-by-mail ballots, which he said are comparable to absentee ballots. Florida’s mail ballots, which must be requested and are checked against a person’s signature, are safe, he said.
“I think the fear that some voters have is you see, like I’ve seen these things out of D.C., they’re sending it to these homes, and you have people that haven’t lived there for 20 years. You have people that are dead that are getting ballots sent. It’s just a massed mailing of ballots regardless of whether it’s requested,” DeSantis added. “That, I think, is not a good way, but that is not what’s happening in Florida. That does, I think, open up the possibility of fraud.”
He also said he has told Lee to have personnel ready to process an influx of vote-by-mail ballots.
In a Tuesday evening update after registration had closed, Lee said in a statement that her office had been in touch with state and federal law officials to investigate the crash.
“At this time, we have not identified any evidence of interference or malicious activity impacting the site,” she said. “We will continue to monitor the situation and provide any additional information as it develops.”
