Let's see how online voter registration is going in Florida. You would think that Florida would make sure they got voting right after being a national laughing stock for "hanging chads" in a previous Presidential election.... but it appears they just don't care. Do the have Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble running the state IT systems? Florida Online Voter Registration Site Broken, Just Hours Before Deadline to Register https://www.newsweek.com/florida-on...n-just-hours-before-deadline-register-1536519 The website that the Florida government uses to register voters has seemingly become inoperable just hours before the October 5 registration deadline to vote in the upcoming November 3 national elections. The website's non-functioning is especially important considering Florida's role as an influential battleground swing state in presidential elections. RegisterToVoteFlorida.gov currently fails to load when accessed through web browsers. Social media users have begun publicly calling upon the state's Republican Governor Ron DeSantis to fix the site and to extend the voter registration deadline as the website prevents untold numbers of voters from registering. According to the Tampa Bay Times, Florida Secretary of State Laurel Lee, the official who oversees the website, tweeted that the website's issues were due to high volume on the site. "We have increased capacity. You can register until midnight tonight. Thank you to those who immediately brought this to our attention," Lee wrote via Twitter. However, at the time of publication, the website still couldn't load on two separate web browsers on a laptop computer. On Twitter, Juan Peñalosa, executive director of the Florida Democratic Party, called the website's issues problems a form of "voter suppression." The website failure puts extra pressure on state Democrats eager to defeat Trump in the next election. On October 3, the Associated Press wrote that although Democrats have typically had hundreds of thousands more registered voters than the state Republican party, Democrats have also had trouble getting their voters out to the polls on Election Day. While Democrats had 330,000 more registered voters than Republicans did going into the 2016 presidential elections, Republican President Donald Trump still won the state by 112,991 votes over Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. The AP reports that Republicans have halved the Democrat's lead in registered voters as of August. Democrats' plans for voter registration drives this year had to go entirely online due to the ongoing COVID-19 epidemic. However, Biden's Florida campaign director, Jackie Lee, told the press wire that the group has out-registered Republicans and is focused on mail-in ballots and absentee voters.
I've said this many times. We still haven't figured out who won in 2000. Al Gore is claiming victory. When you have no state income tax, government services just aren't as up to par as you might like them. Its a sacrifice we're willing to accept here in Florida!
UNF Poll shows Biden leading in Florida during presidential race The same poll also reveals that the majority of Florida voters believe state officials have eased off of social-distancing restrictions too quickly. https://www.firstcoastnews.com/arti...-race/77-bb13c399-d213-4924-8273-ad9c546d0f9b A new poll released Tuesday from the University of North Florida finds presidential candidate and Former Vice President Joe Biden as the frontrunner in the presidential race among Florida voters. The same poll also reveals that the majority of Florida voters believe state officials have eased off of social-distancing restrictions too quickly amid the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the poll, released by the Public Opinion Research Lab at UNF, 51 percent of the voters surveyed said they intend to vote for Biden and 45 percent said they would vote for President Donald Trump. One percent would vote for someone else and 3 percent are still unsure, the poll says. The poll also asked participating voters if the most recent presidential debate was influential in their voting decision. The poll says only 27 percent of responding voters reported the debate was "very or somewhat" influential in their decision. The remaining 73 percent indicated it was not influential at all, according to the poll's data. The poll also noted about 42 percent of responding voters indicated they plan on voting by mail, with early and election day in-person at just 29 percent each. “This vast majority of responses from this survey were collected on the two days immediately following the debate and do not account for voter concerns following the President’s recent COVID-19 diagnosis,” Dr. Binder, director of the Public Opinion Research Lab, said. ”This large six-point gap between the candidates is likely attributed to the immediate aftermath of the debate. However, this is Florida, and I expect the election results to be very close once all the votes are counted.” The poll shows 46 percent of participants approve of President Trump while 53 percent disapprove. Forty-seven percent of participants approve of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' performance while 51 percent disapprove. “All of the Republican leaders in the state are underwater in their approval ratings,” Binder said. “Perhaps due to voter’s concerns about their connections to Trump.” The poll also asked participants about the government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In regards to the federal government's response, 61 percent of participants said the federal government is not doing enough to support the economy during the pandemic, 9 percent said it is doing too much and 29 percent said the federal government is doing the right amount. The poll shows a similar trend in regard to the state government. Fifty-nine percent of polled voters said the state government is not doing enough, 6 percent say it is doing too much and 34 percent said the right amount is being done. When asked about easing social-distancing restrictions, the poll shows 52 percent of respondents said the state government is moving too quickly, 16 percent said it is moving to slow and 32 percent said the government is moving fast enough. Respondents were also asked their perspective on racial inequality. When asked if Black people and white people receive equal treatment by police, 56 percent of respondents strongly or somewhat disagreed. When asked the same questions about police treatment of Hispanic people and white people, 53 percent of respondents disagreed, according to the poll. About 53 percent of participants believe police-involved deaths of Black people are signs of a broad problem of systemic racism, rather than isolated incidents, the poll says. For the full poll results, click here.
Let's see how things are going in Rona Central... Central Florida sees jump in coronavirus-related hospitalizations as state reports 2,251 new cases Thousands of students to return to in-person learning across Florida in coming days https://www.clickorlando.com/news/l...italizations-as-state-reports-2251-new-cases/
Hey Zing, I was expecting a spike in Florida with the restrictions lifted but I don't see it right offhand----Can you point us to it?
Gov. DeSantis’s hand-picked ‘experts’ can’t change reality of COVID-19 https://www.sun-sentinel.com/opinio...0201006-pegfyp3ncbeibgkas7pxi3wph4-story.html The many treatments President Trump has received for COVID-19 don’t include hydroxychloroquine. So much for the one million doses of that junk cure Gov. Ron DeSantis ordered for Florida. Details about science, however, don’t bother the man who long ago stopped working for Florida and started working for the Trump re-election campaign. When the science doesn’t align with DeSantis, he tries to change the science. On Sept. 25, DeSantis surprised counties and cities by moving the state into Phase 3 of reopening. The three-page order came on a Friday and left local governments scrambling. All three South Florida counties issued different responses. A day earlier, DeSantis had convened one of those COVID-19 panels he favors over taking hard questions from reporters. None of the panelists is from Florida. All three, however, played their roles in backing DeSantis' view that Florida should reopen as much as possible as soon as possible, going against the advice of public health experts in the state. Jayanta Bhattachanya, Martin Kulldorff and Michael Levitt are credentialed men. Bhattachanya and Levitt are medical professors at Stanford University. Kulldorff teaches at Harvard Medical School. Levitt won the 2013 Nobel Prize in chemistry. They oppose lockdowns, believing that the United States should emulate Sweden and seek herd immunity, or what Trump called “herd mentality.” They want schools to fully reopen. Bhattachanya and Levitt favor an age-based response to the pandemic, freeing up younger people from restrictions and focusing on the elderly who make up most of the victims. In late August, DeSantis appeared with Scott Atlas, another member of the Stanford medical faculty and a member of Trump’s COVID-19 task force. Atlas, who disputes the need for mask-wearing, is not a public health specialist. Neither are Bhattachanya, Kulldorff and Levitt. Indeed, Bhattachanya drew controversy for a study that he co-authored. It suggested that COVID-19 was more widespread but less lethal than believed. Stanford began an investigation after critics accused Bhattachanya and the others of slanting the results for political purposes. DeSantis could have found any number of actual experts in Florida. Most of them, however, feel differently. Jay Wolfson teaches public health at the University of South Florida in Tampa. He acknowledged that COVID-19 deaths should “stabilize” as doctors learn more about managing the disease. But Wolfson said calls to reopen quickly were “political statements.” Yet DeSantis rolls on with his contrarian message, seeking to persuade Floridians and people beyond that everything you have heard outside the Trump orbit is bogus. On Monday, DeSantis cited a National Review article that said lockdowns had no effect on containing the virus. In May, a National Review article congratulated DeSantis for his management of the virus. Six weeks later, the state set a national one-day record for new cases and a state record for deaths. It’s a mystery why DeSantis would expect anyone to heed his advice. Florida is approaching 15,000 deaths. California, with nearly twice as many residents, has only about 10 percent more COVID-19-related fatalities. The governor — like all Republicans in Florida — would point to New York, which leads the nation with 33,000 deaths. The virus, however, came to New York from Europe three months before Trump issued a travel ban. If the main source of COVID-19 at that time had been South America, Florida could have been New York. DeSantis has tried for months to create an alternate reality. He recently referred to the “growing consensus” that lockdowns were a mistake. The governor’s new “experts” are the source of that “consensus.” Meanwhile, reality intrudes. Regal Cinemas is closing theaters in South Florida indefinitely. Disney is laying off employees. DeSantis can beg people to see a movie or visit a theme park, but those industries won’t recover until the virus is much more under control. I emailed DeSantis' communications director a list of questions about whose COVID-19 advice he is touting and why. No response came. My follow-up voicemail was not returned. The governor never has understood that economic health depends on public health. Trying to keep Florida safe for Trump does not make Florida safe for Floridians.