Voter registration extended after online crash
Florida’s website was overwhelmed by user demand before Monday’s deadline.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis extended the state’s voter registration deadline Tuesday after he said heavy traffic crashed the state’s online system and potentially prevented thousands from enrolling to cast ballots in next month’s presidential election.
DeSantis extended the deadline from Monday until 7 p. m. Tuesday. In addition to online registration, DeSantis ordered elections, motor vehicle and tax collectors offices to stay open until that hour for anyone who wants to register in person. He also said any forms postmarked by Tuesday will be accepted.
Florida Secretary of State Laurel Lee, who oversees the voting system, said the online registration system “was accessed by an unprecedented 1.1 million requests per hour” during the last few hours of Monday. Off icials said many of the requests were probably repeated attempts by those who failed to get into the system.
Lee’s office is investigating the overload, which began just before 5 p. m. Monday, seven hours before the deadline. It continued through the night.
“You can have the best site in the world, but sometimes there are hiccups,” DeSantis said during a news conference at the Villages, a large retirement community in central Florida. “If 500,000 people descend at the same time, it creates a bottleneck.”
Chief Executive Matthew Prince of Cloudflare, the internet infrastructure company that protects Florida’s elections website, tweeted that he has seen no indication that the system had been hit by a cyberattack.
Still, the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency warned elections officials nationwide last week that cyberattacks could disrupt their systems during the run- up to the election. They particularly noted “distributed denial- of- service” attacks, which inundate a computer system with requests, potentially clogging up servers until the system becomes inaccessible to legitimate users.
The potential for outside meddling is an especially sensitive issue in Florida, a key battleground state in November’s election between President Trump and his Democratic challenger, former Vice President Joe Biden. The state has lingering questions about Russian hacking during the election four years ago.
Whatever caused the disruption, it threw up a roadblock for those trying to register. Sarah Dinkins, a Florida State University student, tried to help her younger sister register Monday night. They began trying about 9 p. m. and by 10: 30 p. m. had not been successful.
“I feel very frustrated,” she said. “If the voting website doesn’t work, fewer people, potentially Democratic voters, will be able to vote.”
The outage affected many Florida felons, who just received the right to vote in a 2018 state referendum that passed overwhelmingly — if they have completed probation and don’t have any outstanding fines or fees. Murderers and sex offenders are still banned.
Desmond Meade, executive director of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, said the group heard from dozens of felons who couldn’t access the system.