Florida voter registration system crashes on last day for filing - Politico

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In this March 17, 2020, file photo, a voter casts his ballot during Florida's primary election at the Orange County Supervisor of Elections office in Orlando, Fla. | Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel via AP, File

Florida’s online voter portal crashed on the final day of registration, prompting Democrats to accuse Gov. Ron DeSantis and other Republican state officials of trying to suppress the vote less than a month before Election Day.

Details: Secretary of State Laurel Lee said the site went down briefly Monday. The portal appeared to continue with problems and in the early evening was down again or moving slowly, possibly overwhelmed by people trying to access it.

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Lee, in a text on Monday evening, said her office thought it had handled the crash “right away”, but was “working now to see if there’s an ongoing problem.”

Floridians who want to vote in the November election have until 12 a.m. Tuesday to register, and Republicans and Democrats had mounted campaigns to urge people to sign up. With President Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden on the ballot, turnout is expected to be high in the battleground state.

Democrats were suspicious of the timing of the crash, noting the system has had problems in the past when demand is high.

“This is just latest attempt from the Republican leaders in Florida to limit democracy,” Florida Democratic Party chair Terrie Rizzo said in a statement. “The Florida Voter Registration website not working on the last day to register to vote in Florida is blatant voter suppression. Fix the website, stop the suppression, and let democracy work."

History: State legislators overwhelmingly voted in 2015 to set up an online registration system in despite opposition from then-Secretary of State Ken Detzner, a Republican, and the portal was launched in 2017.

In 2020, nearly 213,000 Floridians so far have used the portal to register to vote, making the site‘s traffic second to only the the state Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, which administers drivers licenses. Florida has more than 14 million active registered voters.

The system has had problems before Monday. Potential voters had problems accessing the site in March. And in 2019 the site was was taken offline for maintenance right ahead of National Voter Registration Day, prompting fierce criticism from Democrats at the time.

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