When Is The Last Day To Register To Vote In Florida 2018

Judge questions state on voter registration meltdown

PublishedOctober 8, 2020

Updated 5:22PM

Ag commissioner wants to extend voting registration

Jennifer Holton reports

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - A federal estimate on Thursday hammered lawyers for Florida elections officials over a meltdown of the land's online voter-registration organisation in the hours leading upwardly to a Monday deadline, suggesting Gov. Ron DeSantis' administration did not take adequate steps to address the problems that prevented thousands of people from accessing the website.

Secretary of State Laurel Lee extended the registration deadline until 7 p.m. Tuesday, but a number of groups, including Dream Defenders and New Florida Majority, quickly filed a lawsuit request Master U.S. District Judge Mark Walker to give Floridians more time to sign for next calendar month'southward presidential ballot.

During a hearing Th, Walker estimated that, even with Tuesday'south hours-long extension, far fewer Floridians applied to vote on the online system than should have, when compared to registrations in the run-upwards to the deadline in 2018.

"The divergence would exist approximately 21,722 voters," Walker said. "That is fewer voters than one would await, based on the numbers from 2018."

Mohammad Jazil, a lawyer for Lee, best-selling that repeated organisation crashes leading up to Monday's 11:59 p.m. deadline to register was problematic.

"No one wants to get this right more than nosotros do. Our website barbarous curt of the standards that we have set up for ourselves. Nosotros tried to remedy the situation," Jazil, an attorney with the Hopping Light-green & Sams firm, told Walker.

Plaintiffs are asking Walker to extend the voting-registration deadline for two days subsequently he problems an society in the case. Walker did not immediately rule after belongings the hearing Thursday.

But in documents filed Wednesday evening, the state argued "the plaintiffs' proposed relief would impairment the country far worse than information technology would benefit the plaintiffs."

Declarations from ii supervisors of elections --- Mark Earley of Leon Canton and Paul Lux of Okaloosa County --- "underscore that relief in this example would add to the noise and the workload during this ballot bike," lawyers for the country wrote.

Much of Thursday's ii ½-hour hearing centered on a U.S. Supreme Court decision, known as "Purcell," that admonished judges to use caution in election-related decisions, especially when elections are looming.

Walker questioned whether the registration problem was so dramatic that information technology required judicial activity.

"You lot can dress up a mule. Yous tin put a saddle on information technology and feed it the best oats and build it a nice barn, but it's still a mule. Information technology'due south not a racehorse. If I'thousand eligible to vote and I try to vote and I try to utilize the country system and I tin can't, how is that not disenfranchisement?" Walker asked, calculation "if you lot were post-obit the trend lines, over xx,000 people lost out on their chance to annals online because of this snafu."

Registration deadline extended after website crashes

Florida'due south voter registration website went down during the final hours before the deadline to annals, so the state extended the deadline to 7 p.thousand. the following day.

RELATED: Afterward unexplained site crash, Florida extends voter registration deadline

Jazil pointed out that 2 individual plaintiffs in the lawsuit who claimed they were unable to use the online system were already registered voters. And he insisted that the online meltdown did non warrant additional action by the courtroom.

"We had a deadline. Information technology was a by and large applicable, widely known deadline. Nosotros had a failure of ane mechanism to encounter that deadline for a portion of one day on the last day of registration," he said.

But Walker, who has frequently ruled against the state in elections-related litigation, wasn't satisfied.

"Are y'all seriously taking the position that if information technology'due south shut down for hours and l (thousand) or 60 thousand people don't get to register, that'southward a small thing?" the chief guess said.

Jazil likewise argued that another extension could sow anarchy during early on voting and on Election Twenty-four hour period amid the coronavirus pandemic. People who accept registered to vote but have non made it onto elections supervisors' electronic rolls would take to cast conditional ballots, which take actress fourth dimension to hand out and process, he said.

"Given social distancing requirements, the less time people spend at the polling precincts, the better," Jazil told Walker. "Given the heightened rhetoric this election cycle, if y'all have people with conditional ballots, I don't know how people might spin it on Twitter or Facebook, and the consequences of that."

Lee ordered the extension Tuesday after thousands of users the previous day were unable to admission the organization, which she said at one point was receiving more 1.1 one thousand thousand hits per hour.

State says overloaded organization caused registration site outage

The number of potential voters left out of the 2020 election due to problems with registertovoteflorida.gov is unknown as the clock ticks down to eleven:59 p.m. EST, Mon, October five -- the deadline for registering to vote in Florida.

RELATED: Server configuration caused Florida voter registration crash, state says

According to a announcement submitted by Scott Maynor, the deputy principal information officer of the land Division of Elections, the online system never "crashed."

"The system experienced a tremendous slowdown due to overwhelming and significant traffic attempting to enter the system at the aforementioned time. This traffic created a bottleneck just not a stoppage," he said.

Nigh 59,000 people used the online system to submit voter-registration applications on Sunday and another seventy,099 successfully submitted applications on Monday, according to Maynor. Approximately 50,000 submitted applications during Tuesday's extension.

On the day before the borderline in 2018, about 25,000 Floridians used the online system to register to vote, and more than sixty,000 registered on October. 9, 2018, the last twenty-four hour period to register, Maynor's annunciation said.

Walker bristled when Jazil tried to innovate a document that showed a weeklong comparison of voter registration from 2018 to 2020 and said the overall numbers were comparable.

"I understand that we apparently don't like math now," but the blueprint shows that "there'southward a huge bump-upward the last 24-hour interval," Walker said.

The judge also questioned the plaintiffs' request to extend the voting-registration deadline for two boosted days afterwards his order is released.

"Why would y'all keep it open for two days? Wouldn't you give everybody two days heads-up and and then exist from 7 p.1000. to midnight two days hence?"

Stuart Naifeh, who represents the plaintiffs, said the organizations need fourth dimension to staff upward and reach out to prospective voters.

RELATED: Election 2020: Tin can voters set an error on a mail-in ballot?

Walker also pressed Naifeh about the additional onus on elections officials who are already swamped, floating a scenario in which the approximate gave 36 hours of notice before opening the online system from 7 p.1000. to midnight, the period of fourth dimension Monday when users had the virtually problems accessing the website.

Elections supervisors are grappling with the COVID-nineteen pandemic, which has caused an extraordinary number of Floridians to vote past mail. Elections officials already are stretched to the breaking point, Walker added.

But Naifeh said elections officials should exist able to handle an influx of voter registrations.

"Confidence in the election requires that people who are eligible and follow the rules be able to vote. In that location's a problem either way," he said.

Voting in Florida 2020: Tampa Bay area election guide

To make sure your vote counts, there are several things to know about early voting in Florida and voting by post in 2020. Here is county-past-county information virtually voting deadlines and methods in the Tampa Bay area.