Tallahassee, FL - An extension of the Florida Voter Registration Deadline was issued just after noon today (October 6) until 7 p.m. tonight.
In a memorandum released by Florida Secretary of State Laurel Lee, "the Department of State's online voter registration website encountered unprecedented volume and traffic the evening of October 5, 2020. Consequently, some Floridians planning to register to vote through the website before the book closing deadline under section 97.055(1)(a) may have experienced difficulties."
“This morning I met with Governor DeSantis to brief him on the status of the online voter registration system and the difficulties we encountered last night due to unprecedented volume and traffic to our website. We are working with local Supervisors of Elections and the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles to ensure that all eligible registrants have the ability submit a voter registration application by 7:00 p.m. this evening,” said Secretary Laurel M. Lee. “During the last few hours, the RegisterToVoteFlorida.gov website was accessed by an unprecedented 1.1 million requests per hour. We will work with our state and federal law-enforcement partners to ensure this was not a deliberate act against the voting process.”
Volusia County Supervisor of Elections Lisa Lewis says she heard the system went offline for about two hours. "They experienced it, I heard, between the hours of five and seven. They had an abundance of people registering or trying to utilize the online voter registration system. They got it back up and running but because of that time, they extended it until 7 p.m."
Lewis also had an update on vote-by-mail totals as of October 5. "We're up to a little over 34,000. We received 6,000 in yesterday and we'll probably be reaching about that much today." She says they are still getting requests for mail-in ballots and the deadline to request is October 24.
