Early voting begins in Central Florida with a few counties experiencing issues

Early voting begins in Central Florida

Early voting began Monday in several counties in Central Florida.

ORLANDO, Fla. - The first day of early voting in Central Florida was marked by technical issues, as some county election websites crashed, sparking concerns about potential problems on Election Day.

"It’s a terrible inconvenience to our voters, and we hate that like crazy," said Alan Hays, Lake County Supervisor of Elections.

The crashes were attributed to issues with the website host, VR Systems, which serves both Lake and Marion counties. The outages occurred on Monday amid heavy early voting turnout.

"All my early voting sites opened at 8 a.m., and there were people in line at every one of them," said Wesley Wilcox, Marion County Supervisor of Elections.

VR Systems addressed the outages in a statement, assuring the public that voting was not affected. "There is no indication of malicious activity, and the ability to cast a ballot and have your vote counted is not impacted by the website outages."

Hays emphasized, "This has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the tabulation system."

By the end of Monday, the website issues were resolved, though VR Systems is still investigating the cause. Some election offices are considering switching to self-hosted websites, following Volusia County's example.

Volusia County’s first day of early voting went smoothly. "I have no room to complain at all," said Lisa Lewis, Volusia County Supervisor of Elections, expressing confidence that their website is prepared for a large turnout on Election Day.

"People are excited about this election, which we’re happy to see," Lewis added.