By Paul Waldmiller
Did you know this past week, a Florida judge rejected a law suit to extend voter registration by one day?
A law suit was filed by several groups representing illegal immigrants. Dream Defenders, New Florida Majority and Latino Justice and several other groups enjoined in that lawsuit filed in Tallahassee claiming that voter resistration for voters here in the State of Florida needed to be extended for two days due to the Florida voter registration website being down the day before the voter registration officially closed. The final day of the registration period has been historically among the busiest.
The voter registration website serves all 67 counties and became officially operational in October, 2017. It has had some issues in the past, but nothing to the degree of this latest fiasco.
Florida Secretary of State Laurel Lee briefly opened registrations for several hours last Tuesday after speaking with Governor Ron DeSantis regarding the website being down. The decision was made to open the website on Tuesday, but few throughout Florida were informed that the site was open and available for voters to register past the deadline.
A spokesman for Governor DeSantis, Fred Piccolo told the Associated press last Friday, “the governor took quick and decisive action to ensure voter access to multiple registration options including online, in person, or through the mail. There was no basis for federal courts to get involved.”
Florida’s chief information officer, James Grant informed the media that “the servers were configured in a way that reduced its capability to a fraction of what it was capable of” but failed to operate on the final day of voter registration.
In U.S. District Court Judge Mark E. Walker’s ruling, although he decided against the law-suit, Walker also stated that Governor DeSantis has “little to be proud of.” Walker went on to state that his decision was “an incredibly close call”, but “the State’s interest in preventing chaos in it’s already precarious – and perennially chaotic – election outweighs the substantial burden imposed on the right to vote.”