MIAMI (NewsNation Now) — Floridians logging into the Secretary of State voter registration website were met with error messages just hours before the deadline to register to vote Monday night.
Officials say the website was overloaded and crashed.
“They are investigating some of the issues that led to it, but it was an inordinate amount of traffic,” Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said.
Federal and state law enforcement agencies are investigating what went wrong, but Florida Secretary of State Laurel M. Lee said they “have not identified any evidence of interference or malicious activity impacting the site.”
Because of the website problems, DeSantis extended the deadline to register to vote into Tuesday. He kept DMVs and election offices open late so Floridians could turn in their registration documents in person and avoid the website.
Some Democrats said it wasn’t enough to fix the problem.
“People are going to be disenfranchised. He had a responsibility to make sure that site did not go down,” Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, a Democrat, said.
There were other voting issues reported Tuesday.
In Columbus, Ohio the Franklin County Board of Elections said a “significant number” of voters were sent absentee ballots intended for someone else.
Officials said the issue was discovered when people reported getting ballots with the wrong local races. They said the problem was traced back to a high-speed scanner that was not working properly.
Tuesday was also the first day for in-person voting in several states.
People lined up around the block from the board of elections in Cleveland to vote.
Inside, voters were screened for coronavirus symptoms, and plastic curtains separated voting booths.
There were also long lines for early voting in Indianapolis, Indiana, where some voters waited three hours there to get inside and vote.