Early voting breaks records in Florida
Voters in Florida weathered downpours that swept across a big portion of the state Monday and still managed to shatter the state's opening-day record for in-person early voting, with at least 350,000 people casting ballots. But some Florida voters faced hurdles that election officials had pledged would not be an issue.
The Orange County Supervisor of Elections Office website suffered a technical issue that prevented some users from accessing the site for several hours. Danae Rivera-Marasco, communications and community outreach coordinator, told ABC News that while it took two to three hours to resolve the issue for the majority of users, some trying to access the website via an AT&T connection were still unable to access it in the evening.
The election office said the issue was “not due to traffic or hacking” and said there hadn’t been a security breach.
In Broward County, voters reported waiting in lines for hours, just days after a spokesman for the county’s supervisor of elections told ABC News he did not expect to see lines at polling sites.
“We rarely have lines during early voting as it is, so this is likely to be even less, simply because of the fact that so many voters are now voting from the kitchen table,” said Steve Vancore, the Broward County elections spokesman, over the weekend.
One voter in Miramar, Florida, told ABC News she waited for close to three hours to vote. In a text, Vancore attributed the back-up there to voter enthusiasm and social distancing.
-ABC News’ Will McDuffie