Florida: Voter registration website overwhelmed at deadline

Tue Oct 6 21:56:57 UTC 2020

On Tue, 6 Oct 2020, Mike Hammett wrote:
> How many of these overloaded web sites that we hear about (voter
> registration, unemployment registration, web sites announced in a big way,
> causing surges in traffic, etc.) have a CDN offloading the low-hanging
> fruit?

Florida uses a CDN, like essentially all states.

There is also lot of duct-tape, inadequate funding and human error across 
all states (and probably no different for governments world-wide). I see 
problems with overloaded state/local emergency alert sites all the time.

Periods of extreme stress is when many systems break. Its not 
necessarily due to malfeasance or malicious.  Expect there will be 
problems with election infrastructure through Election Day, and 
afterwards. I fully expect US state/local election administrators to
make it work this time too (eventually, maybe a few days or weeks).

Be on the look out for clever nefarious actors.

But the dumb mistake is the more likely explanation for most problems.

And in either case, Murphy's Law applies. Have a backup plan because 
things will go wrong.