TALLAHASSEE – The day after Florida’s voter registration formula collapsed due to an “unprecedented” volume of applications, Secretary of State Laurel Lee extended the deadline to 7 p. m. Tuesday so that eligible voters have the opportunity to register for the November election.
Lee warned that the site exceeded requests and that the crash may be related to a planned attempt to overload the system.
She in enforcement of state and federal law to investigate.
“We are working with local election assistants in accordance with viewers and the Florida Department of Road Safety and Motor Vehicles to ensure that all eligible enrollees have the opportunity to file a voter registration application until 7:00 p. m. tonight,” Lee said. online page accessed through 1. 1 million unprecedented requests depending on the time.
“We will work with our state and federal law enforcement partners to ensure that this is not a planned act that opposes the voting process. “
All programs won in the state’s OVR formula will be included in the registration records for the November 3 election, he said.
All programs won through the following channels will also be accepted:
The problematic OVR formula was blocked for several hours on Monday night, which prevented others from registering. Several Democratic leaders and voter rights teams have suggested deSantis extend the voter registration deadline, while voter teams have said they are legal action.
In addition: on the deadline, Florida voter registration is broken, broken for hours
“It was a very worrying progression on the last day of voter registration in Florida,” said Patricia Brigham, president of the Florida League of Women Voters. “We’re looking a lot at any dispute. “
Thirty-five voting rights teams sent DeSantis a letter this morning urging the governor to extend the registration deadline to Wednesday, to expand and publicize the technical support hotline, and to ensure that operators master English and Spanish.
People who post to Twitter around 4:30 p. m. On Monday they encountered error messages while looking to log into the online system. At first, Lee said users experienced lags for a 15-minute era.
But other people said they continued to have trouble connecting to the formula all night, until the deadline.
This is the fourth time the formula has been planted since it was launched 3 years ago. It crashed a month before the 2018 primaries and a day before the voter registration deadline for the 2018 general election. It crashed after presidential number one in March.
In an interview with USA TODAY NETWORK-Florida in September, Lee said the electoral branch is doing its best to increase load capacity by installing more online servers in anticipation of a massive wave of voters.
A wave of voter registration is typical before a presidential election. In addition, the state sent invitation cards to register to 2. 2 million eligible voters a month ago.
Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, the state-elected Democrat, sent a letter to DeSantis and Lee this morning “highlighting the mistakes of yesterday’s voter registration website, which for hours prevented Floridans from registering to vote. “
He joined others in asking DeSantis to extend the voter registration deadline to at least 24 hours “due to errors that may have prevented thousands of Floridians from exercising their right to vote in the upcoming elections. “
Contact Jeff Schweers at jschweers@gannett. com and meet him on Twitter @jeffschweers.
Subscribe and don’t miss any fuss.