Election chief rips state for sign-up ‘mess’
Palm Beach County’s Bucher calls for review, fix of online glitches.
A day after she asked Tallahassee for an extension of the voter registration deadline, citing Florida’s faulty website, Palm Beach County elections supervisor Susan Bucher on Wednesday kept the pressure on state elections officials.
Bucher called the online voter sign-up system “a mess” and said it needed to be reviewed to see why it keeps experiencing glitches.
Bucher said she kept her office open Tuesday — the last day to register — an extra two hours until 7 p.m., welcoming about a half-dozen citizens who said they were unable to register online.
“This happened before the primary (election) as well. We need to get to the bottom of what the problem is with the online voter registration system,” said Bucher. “We need to address the problem and if they’re not going to acknowledge the problem then we can prove the problem.”
Bucher said she plans to ask the state for the enrollment numbers from last week through Tuesday. She expects the request to take a while because of Hurricane Michael. But she predicted the numbers will show that there was a problem with the staterun online enrollment website, RegisterToVoteFlorida.gov, even though a state spokeswoman says the website was never completely down and only experienced “intermittent” issues.
Sarah Revell, the state’s communications director, said Tuesday afternoon that all problems had been resolved.
Bucher fired back Wednesday: “Well, of course, because it’s back up. But what happened the whole weekend? We need to address the problem and if they’re not going to acknowledge the problem then we can prove the problem.”
The numbers speak for them-
selves, she said. Bucher’s office typically sees 300 to 500 voter registrations per day. According to Bucher, these are the daily totals since Friday:
■ Friday: 317
■ Saturday: 1
■ Sunday: 1
■ Monday: 3
■ Tuesday: 200
The state’s website, which cost $1.8 million, was launched last year as part of a 2015 law that required online registration be avail- able by Oct. 1, 2017. Bucher said it’s been problematic.
“There was not a robust test on the online voter registration system and unfortunately now we’re testing it live,” Bucher said. “For the third-largest state in the country and the largest swing state in the United States and $1.8 million, you’d think that the system would work all the time as expected.”
The Florida Democratic Party and o ther voting groups have called on the state to extend the deadline at least one week because of Hurricane Michael. The party filed a lawsuit against Ken Detzner, Florida’s secretary of state, fearing “thousands of eligible voters will be disenfranchised.”