Florida voter registration system crashes on last day for filing

[634-5789]

Details: Secretary of State Laurel Lee said the site went down briefly Monday. The portal appeared to continue with problems and in the early evening was down again or moving slowly, possibly overwhelmed by people trying to access it.

Lee, in a text on Monday evening, said her office thought it had handled the crash “right away”, but was “working now to see if there’s an ongoing problem.”

Floridians who want to vote in the November election have until 12 a.m. Tuesday to register, and Republicans and Democrats had mounted campaigns to urge people to sign up. With President Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden on the ballot, turnout is expected to be high in the battleground state.

Democrats were suspicious of the timing of the crash, noting the system has had problems in the past when demand is high.



https://www.politico.com/states/florida/story/2020/10/05/florida-voter-registration-system-crashes-on-last-day-for-filing-1321423

[klook]

1. You're supposed to size the system for the busiest hour on the busiest day.

I learned that working in IT. So that means you need a) enough system resources to handle the peak periods and b) capable engineers and project managers to design the system to do the job.

Of course, in a state government — one run by Republicans, to boot — you’ve probably got other problems to contend with on top of that: equipment and services purchased from a vendor who may or not be the best choice for the job, budgetary restraints, outdated or cobbled-together systems, etc., all managed at the top by somebody who actively wants the system to fail. (All conjecture on my part, but in DeSantis’s Florida, maybe not too far off the mark.)