All Voting is Local Florida State Director Brad Ashwell issued the following statement in response to reports that Florida’s online voter registration (OVR) system has crashed again today – the deadline to register for the November general election:
“History is repeating itself, and Florida voters continue to bear the burden of ineptitude as a result of negligence. The online voter registration website has a history of crashing just before or on the deadline when Floridians can register. The Governor and Secretary Lee should extend the deadline.”
“We’ve made repeated attempts to work with Governor DeSantis and Secretary of State Lee to fix the faulty website, and even found an independent vendor to stress-test the system for free. But they refused, and now we’re all paying the consequence.
“No aspiring voter should be silenced because the state can’t maintain a functioning website. The right to vote is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and serves as the bedrock of our democracy.
“OVR should have been fixed long ago, and the failure rests squarely with Governor DeSantis and Secretary Lee. Florida voters deserve better.”
Background:
Florida’s online voter registration system went live in 2017 only to crash a year later.
Since September 2018, All Voting is Local and advocates have made repeated requests urging Florida’s Secretary of State to make public its plan for preventing and resolving problems with the state’s online voter registration system. Despite repeated pleas to fix the site, it failed in July of 2018, leading to the primary election registration deadline. It failed again in October 2018, a day before the registration deadline for the general election. Most recently, it failed on March 29, shortly after the presidential preference primaries.
All Voting is Local fights to eliminate needless and discriminatory barriers to voting before they happen, to build a democracy that works for us all. It is a collaborative campaign housed at The Leadership Conference Education Fund, in conjunction with the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation; the American Constitution Society; the Campaign Legal Center; and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. For more information about All Voting is Local, visit AllVotingIsLocal.com and follow us on Twitter @votingislocal.
