Official says misconfigured servers brought down Floridas registration website
Pop superstar Ariana Grande contributed to an unprecedented surge in civic passion in Florida that left the state’s computer servers struggling to keep up.
But the state’s chief information officer says misconfigured servers — not overwhelming online traffic caused by a celebrity’s tweets — are to blame for problems with the state’s voter registration website that left users frustrated with error messages and glitches Monday night.
Florida election officials have been puzzled by an “unprecedented" surge in online traffic that overwhelmed the state’s voter registration website and prompted the extension of the 11:59 p.m. Monday deadline to register to vote in the Nov. 3 presidential election.
The volume of traffic even led election officials to work with law enforcement to rule out a cyberattack. Florida extended the registration deadline to 7 p.m. Tuesday in response to the website’s problems, but voting rights groups are asking in a federal lawsuit for more time to register.
One possible but less nefarious explanation for the spike: Grande tweeted a message about 3 p.m. Monday encouraging her fellow Floridians to register to vote. She has more than 77 million Twitter followers, and her tweet was subsequently retweeted nearly 7,000 times.
https://www.orlandosentinel.com/politics/fl-ne-ariana-grande-florida-voter-website-crash-20201007-ov5nr4ndqva2pesl7x4wsattme-story.html