Decision to extend the Florida voter registration deadline hangs in judge’s hands

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — There was a hearing Thursday on a lawsuit that if granted would give eligible Floridians at least two more days to register to vote.

The Florida Immigrant Coalition’s Senior Field Manager, Joel Bravo, said a decision can come at any moment.

“We are waiting anxiously to hear back from the lawsuit as to whether we get granted an extension,” said Bravo.

The Florida Immigrant Coalition is one of five plaintiffs listed on a lawsuit against Gov. Ron DeSantis and Secretary of State Laurel Lee.

“We asked on the night of, we got together we asked for the extension of two days,” said Bravo.

The voter registration deadline was 11:59 p.m. on Oct. 5.

But some would-be voters received an error message following a surge of heavy traffic online.

In a tweet, Lee said the site was down for about 15 minutes but Bravo said it was much longer.

“Internally we clocked the site being down for about 4 hours and on that day, we were registering about 239 people per hour,” said Bravo.

Florida is one of several states with some of the earliest online voter registration deadlines for the general election.

Deadlines in Georgia, Indiana and Kentucky were also 29 days before Election Day, and it’s 30 days before in Alaska, Hawaii, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Carolina and Tennessee, according to vote.org.

Because of the delays, Lee extended Florida’s deadline to 7 p.m. on Oct. 6, but Bravo said not every would-be voter had enough of a heads-up.

“The next day as we were chasing down voters and people who are attempting to register to vote we were able to register 1,400 people just on that extension from 12 p.m. to 7 p.m.,” said Bravo.

Rate

Cox Media Group