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Florida’s online voter registration portal was down for about seven hours yesterday after the site began experiencing an unprecedented 1.1 million requests per hour on the final day to register for the November Election.

The state has extended the window until 7 pm Tuesday, but it falls short of the requests made by progressive groups and Florida Democrats.

Hopeful voters trying to register on the state’s site were met with error messages and pages failing to load in the final hours of the last day to register for the November Election.

“Voters were harmed by what happened yesterday,” said Brad Ashwell with All Voting is Local.

And it’s not the first time the site has experienced issues.

“Before the book closing in 2018 for the Primary and the General it broke down,” said Ashwell.

In a release issued Tuesday, the Florida Secretary of State said an unprecedented 1.1 million requests an hour caused the crash.

“The onus is on the system to be working,” said Florida Commissioner of Agriculture Nikki Fried.

Fried sent a letter to the Governor Tuesday morning requesting the registration widow be extended by 24 hours.

“With enough notice that we are in fact extending it. Cause again, if we extend it now for three hours without notifying people then they will have missed that opportunity,” said Fried.

All Voting is Local was part of a coalition of 34 progressive groups asked for a two day extension.

“There are a lot of questions still whether the site is even ready… The call for two days really should extend to the time we know the site is fully functional,” said Ashwell.

It wasn’t until noon Tuesday that the Secretary of State extended the registration window until 7 PM, leaving only a seven hour window to register.

Governor Ron DeSantis noted you also have that time to register in person at the DMV, Tax Collector or Elections Supervisor’s office.

“We really think it’s important that there also be live people that can help and that it’s not just internet or nothing,” said DeSantis.

You can also mail in a paper application to your local supervisor of elections office.

It will still be counted as long as it is postmarked by October 6th.

And the Secretary of State said in her Tuesday release that state and federal law enforcement are investigating the incident to ensure there was no deliberate attempt to crash the site.

We asked if any improvements have been made to prevent another bottle neck Tuesday night, but did not receive a response.