Governor DeSantis has extended the voter registration deadline to participate in the 2020 general election after the issues with the voter registration site on Monday evening.

Secretary of State Laurel M. Lee issued the directive to reopen Florida’s registration deadline. 

Today, I issued a directive to re-open Florida's voter registration deadline to participate in the Nov 3, General Election before 7 pm EST for applications submitted online and by 7 pm local time for in-person registration, today, October 6. More: https://t.co/7kK8aeEsas

— Florida Department of State (@FLSecofState) October 6, 2020

The deadline is now 7p.m. Tuesday, Oct.6.

This morning, Lee met with Governor DeSantis to brief him on the status of the online voter registration system and the difficulties they 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 to submit a voter registration application by 7:00 p.m. this evening,” said Secretary Laurel M. Lee in a press release.

According to the press release, during the last few hours, the website was accessed by an unprecedented 1.1 million requests per hour.  Officials will work with the state and federal law-enforcement partners to ensure this was not a deliberate act against the voting process.

“Last night, we experienced an extremely high volume of traffic to the Online Voter Registration System,” said Secretary Lee.  Lee urges those who are not registering to vote to not access RegisterToVoteFlorida.gov during this time and drive up traffic to the site.

You can register to vote or check your registration status here.

Feature image by Tiffany Tertipes via Unpsplash.

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