October 6, 2020

Florida’s Voter Registration Portal Crashed After Receiving 1.1 Million Requests in 1 Hour

The state extended the deadline—but advocates say not by enough.

Allen Eyestone/The Palm Beach Post via ZUMA Wire

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Officials in Florida extended the state’s voter registration deadline after the online registration portal was hit with roughly 1.1 million requests per hour on Monday, which was the last day to register to vote online, according to Florida Secretary of State Laurel M. Lee. Now Florida voters have until 7 p.m. Tuesday to register to vote.

In response to the site crashing and the new deadline, a coalition of voting rights groups filed a lawsuit against Governor Ron DeSantis and Lee to extend the online voter registration deadline for at least two more days. Tuesday evening, they said in a statement, “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.”

The crash was likely caused by “repeated attempts by those who failed to get into the system,” the Associated Press reported Tuesday. An earlier AP report said the site suffered “unexpectedly heavy traffic that can’t be immediately explained.” An official with the company contracted to support the state’s registration website was quoted as saying there was no evidence of a cyber attack.

Lee said the state was “working with our state and federal law-enforcement partners to ensure this was not a deliberate act against the voting process.” A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment.

According to Politico, the number of requests per hour is more than quadruple the 213,000 people who have used the site to register to vote thus far in 2020. 

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

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And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

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