After night of website malfunctions, Florida extends voter registration deadline

outline205/iStockBy WILL MCDUFFIE, ABC News, ABC News

(NEW YORK) -- Florida’s secretary of state issued a directive Tuesday to reopen the state’s voter registration window, and potential voters now have until 7 pm EST to register.

The decision came hours after voters across the state encountered problems with the registration website, Registertovoteflorida.gov, as the clock ticked toward the initial midnight deadline.

"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 to submit a voter registration application by 7:00 pm this evening," Secretary of State Laurel Lee said in a public notice released Tuesday afternoon.

According to Lee, the website was inundated with over a million requests per hour in the final hours before the deadline.

"We will work with our state and federal law-enforcement partners to ensure this was not a deliberate act against the voting process," she added.

Just before 6 p.m. Monday, Lee posted on Twitter announcing the website's functions had been restored and that a "high volume" of visitors caused delays for about 15 minutes.

OVR is online and working. Due to high volume, for about 15 minutes, some users experienced delays while trying to register. We have increased capacity. You can register until midnight tonight.
Thank you to those who immediately brought this to our attention.

— Laurel M. Lee (@FLSecofState) October 5, 2020

Hours after the announcement, however, the website was still giving people fits.

Destinee Morin, a recent high school graduate from St. Cloud, who is already registered, spent much of Monday unsuccessfully refreshing the website, Registertovoteflorida.gov, in an attempt to register two friends, both of them teenagers and would-be first-time voters.

Morin said she had problems since mid-afternoon.

"If the website is down, that's not fair. A lot of people went on that website today because they didn't realize it was their last day to register," she said. "I really hope they extend it."

Carl Morelli, a 23-year old Gainesville resident looking to update his registration after moving to a new apartment in August, tried the website for the first time at 9:15 p.m. but was met with glitches after completing the first step. After more than two hours of switching internet browsers and even computers, he almost gave up.

"It was getting down to the last 10 minutes and I was about ready to throw in the towel, but I said, 'Let me just give it a few more tries,'" he told ABC News.

At 11:55 p.m., he successfully registered.

"I was really happy and excited that I was going to be able to vote," he said.

Others weren't so lucky.

Kyle Redula, 20, a student at Palm Beach Atlantic University in West Palm Beach, was eager to register to vote for the first time, only to find himself struggling for hours with the website Monday. As the deadline came and went, he was still receiving error messages.

"It's definitely something that I was looking forward to," he told ABC News. "Considering this is the Department of State website and it's been giving me problems, it's been frustrating."

Redula tried the website again Tuesday afternoon after his classes, and was able to successfully register. “It went smoothly,” he said in a text. “No problems whatsoever.”

The issues with the website prompted angry responses on Twitter from Democrats in the state, among them Nikki Fried, Florida's commissioner of agriculture and consumer services, and Florida's lone statewide elected Democrat.

"The voter registration deadline is just hours away, and the online voter registration website is broken," she wrote. Addressing Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, Fried called the situation "unacceptable" and urged him to "fix it."

In a later post, Fried wrote that the developments Monday night amounted to "voter suppression" and called on Lee and DeSantis to extend the registration deadline.

Not planning for a voter registration surge is voter suppression.

Not ensuring everyone who wants to register can do so is voter suppression.

Not extending the deadline is voter suppression.@GovRonDeSantis & @FLSecofState, you must extend the deadline.https://t.co/AjJul6VZhV

— Nikki Fried (@nikkifried) October 6, 2020

After the announcement of the extension, a coalition of voting rights groups filed a lawsuit Tuesday afternoon against the governor and secretary of state, calling for the deadline to be extended an additional two days.

The group, which includes New Florida Majority, Dream Defenders, and Organize Florida, wrote in a press release that the new window “is simply not enough time for voting rights groups to re-engage canvassers and volunteers and to educate voters that they can try to register online again.”

A separate composition of civil rights groups sent a letter to the Department of State Monday night demanding that the deadline be extended until midnight Tuesday. The letter, signed by Julile Houk of the Lawyers’ Committee, threatened “other legal remedies” if their demand was not met.

After the extension was announced Tuesday, a representative from Campaign Legal Center, one of the organizations, told ABC News they are “still discussing immediate action.”

The seven-hour timeline is “not enough” for people who can’t make the window because of “work, school, or other responsibilities,” said the representative, Blair Bowie, Legal Counsel and Restore Your Vote Manager.

“At the same time, this was an important step and will allow many eligible Floridians to register today and have a voice in November.”

The decision to extend the deadline to Tuesday evening drew support from Republicans in the state. Joe Gruters, Chair of the Florida GOP, told ABC News in a text that it was "the right call."

Here's a state-by-state guide to voting in the age of COVID-19.

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