Florida fails its citizens, right before an election

TALLAHASSEE– It’s too bad JudgeMarkWalker’s actionswon’t change anything. Maybe hiswords will.

Walker is the federal judge in Tallahassee who reluctantly refused to extend Florida’s voter registration deadline after the state’s online system crashed lastMonday, hours before amidnight deadline to register to vote.

“Florida has done it again,” Walker wrote in Friday’s order. “This case is about howthe state failed its citizens.”

He criticized Gov. Ron DeSantis’ chief elections officer, Secretary of State Laurel Lee, for a “half measure” solution, a hurriedly announced extension that gave locked-out users a windowof less than seven hours, most of it during the day when people are busiest.

In a ruling dripping with outrage, the judge said itwas an “incredibly close call” but felt he had no choice.

He cited aU.S. Supreme Court decision that requires judges in last-minute elections cases to consider possible disruptions, including discouraging people from voting.

Two county election supervisors, Leon’sMark Earley andOkaloosa’s Paul Lux, warned the judge that another extensionwould be disruptive.

ButWalker, who has ruled decisively in numerous Florida voting rights cases, had no such misgivings four years ago when he ordered formerGov. Rick Scott to extend the registration deadline for six more days, afterHurricaneMatthew pounded the state.

“No right is more precious than having a voice in our democracy,” Walkerwrote in that 2016 case, brought by the Florida Democratic Party.

Florida had three years to prepare for the inevitable last-minute crush of would-be voters.

Watchdog groups such as American Oversight and All Voting is Local sounded alarms long and loud. Still, the system crashed.

Lee told me last month in an interview she felt the systemwas ready for a surge in demand.

“We have beenworking very hard to ensure that our online voter registration process could handle increased capacity,” she said, citing additional servers and more “load capacity.”

After thisweek’s crash, the Associated Press quoted the state’s new chief information officer, former state Rep. James Grant, as saying the state’s serverswere configured in a way that greatly limited that capacity. The result: more Floridians disenfranchised.

In a court hearing on Thursday, the judge calculated that at least 21,722 peoplewere not able to register to vote, even after the state’s brief extension.

The judge’s estimatewas based on the state’s own figures from 2018, by comparing the difference in registration totals between the last day and next-to-last day to register.

Ponder that number for amoment: 21,722. That’s more than twice as many voters as the 10,033-vote margin that put Rick Scott in theU.S. Senate against Bill Nelson two years ago, and it’s more than three times as much asNikki Fried’s margin overMatt Caldwell in the race for agriculture commissioner.

Someone should pay a price for what happened here, but it’s doubtful anyone will. And who knows what the effect could be?

Consider this scenario, frightening though it may be. Donald J. Trump clinches a second term as president with an incredibly close victory in Florida of 10,000 votes over Joe Biden, fewer than half the number of people who could not register. Howmight that look to the world as a true exercise in voter suppression?

The collapse of the online system is all the more infuriating when you consider that the state has just spent about $1 million on an outreach campaign to get more than 2.2million unregistered adults to register.

The postcards, mailed out last month, were labeled “Important!”and “Importante!” and directed people to use— you guessed it— the online system, registertovoteflorida.gov, to join the rolls.

Howmany of those people who couldn’t register received one of those postcards?

If any good comes of this, it’s if everyone who registered to vote and didn’t wait till the last minute takes advantage of the franchise and casts a ballot between nowandNov. 3. What’sworse than not bothering to register to vote is being registered— and not taking advantage of it.