As of 5:25 pm on Monday, the last day to register to vote in Florida, the state website experiences an error that prevented anyone from accessing the site. In other words, it failed.
Hours later, at 10:28 pm, a similar message popped up for us, and then we received a hosting error message that leads us to believe that the website probably experienced an overload of traffic, traffic that the server could not support.
Ok so we’ll have to extend voter registration right @GovRonDeSantis ? https://t.co/vvR3ruDV4J
— Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (@DebbieforFL) October 5, 2020
The first error message was stubbled upon by Florida Democratic Spokesman Juan Penalosa, tweeted at Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) reminding him that this was the very same problem the state website experienced in 2018.
Penalosa’s tweeted was retweeted by Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (D), who questioned if DeSantis was going to extend voter registration because website failed.
“Ok so we’ll have to extend voter registration right,” question Rep. Mucarsel-Powell
Mucarsel-Powell’s retweet was then retweeted by Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D) called the error “inexcusable” and demanded that DeSantis “fix” the problem and “extend the registration deadline by a day to make up for it.”
Democrats and Republicans should make a big stink of this, but don’t expect DeSantis do much about this website issue. The voter registration website has been up for months and both parties have been pushing prospective voters to register themselves.
