A US federal judge has blocked an attempt by four civil rights groups in Florida to extend the deadline to register to vote after the state's voter registration website crashed due to abnormally heavy traffic, a court order showed on Friday
WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 09th October, 2020) A US Federal judge has blocked an attempt by four civil rights groups in Florida to extend the deadline to register to vote after the state's voter registration website crashed due to abnormally heavy traffic, a court order showed on Friday.
On Tuesday, the four groups - Dream Defenders, New Florida Majority, Organize Florida and Florida Immigrant Coalition - filed a federal lawsuit seeking an injunction to extend the deadline after the state's online voter registration system "crashed, going offline for several hours," court documents show.
On Friday, Chief US District Judge Mark Walker denied the groups' request, though he sharply chastised state officials over the system meltdown.
"Unfortunately for these potential voters, the Court cannot remedy what the state broke under these circumstances," Walker wrote in his ruling. "This Court notes that every man who has stepped foot on the Moon launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Yet, Florida has failed to figure out how to run an election properly - a task simpler than rocket science."
Just hours before the Monday night deadline to register to vote, the website crashed as it experienced "an unprecedented 1.1 million requests per hour," Secretary of State Laurel Lee said in a statement on Tuesday.
In her statement, Lee also announced that the deadline would be extended until Tuesday night, but the four civil rights groups had argued that this was not enough time to allow for the high volumes of traffic and had sought to keep voter registration open for two more days. They said that thousands of potential voters had been disenfranchised when the voting system crashed.
