Voter Lookup Tools Go Down on Florida County Election Sites as Early Voting Begins

Online tools that Florida voters use to find their sample ballots and polling places went dark on county election websites Wednesday, Oct. 21, as early voting got under way, after the vendor that runs most of the state's Supervisor of Elections sites pulled public-facing features offline over newly disclosed security flaws in the PHP programming language. Officials stressed that voting itself was not affected.

VR Systems, the Tallahassee-based elections technology company, took the lookup service down at 10 a.m. Wednesday in response to warnings from the PHP Foundation, which oversees the widely used open-source software, the company's chief operations officer, Ben Martin, told Suncoast Searchlight. Martin said the tools would stay offline until VR Systems finished testing, and he could not say whether that would take hours or days.

What went down, and what still works

The outage hit the lookup functions that county election offices offer on their websites, including sample ballots, polling place and early voting location finders and district information. In Sarasota County, the Supervisor of Elections site displayed a notice that some online lookup tools were temporarily unavailable, and voters could not view sample ballots or find voting locations, according to Suncoast Searchlight's report, which was published by WGCU. In Manatee County, volunteers helping voters were directing them to the district map on the Supervisor of Elections site instead.

Suncoast Searchlight described the problem as affecting election websites across Florida. The Florida Press was unable to independently confirm which other counties posted outage notices.

The voter registration status tool operated by the Florida Department of State appeared to remain active, the outlet reported. That state lookup, at the Division of Elections website, lets voters confirm their registration and party affiliation.

Martin emphasized that the outage was limited to information lookups. "It's critical to understand that this does not affect the ability to vote, only the ability to look up information," he said. He added: "This does not affect the voter rolls."

Why the vendor pulled the tools

PHP is a programming language that runs a large share of the web. About 69% of websites use it, according to figures from the web technology survey firm W3Techs cited by Suncoast Searchlight. The PHP Foundation's disclosure of critical vulnerabilities on Wednesday raised the possibility that sites built on the language could be exposed to hackers and cyberattacks.

The flaws were discovered by OpenAI, according to Suncoast Searchlight, which reported that the company described them in a blog post as one of the most impactful security issues in recent memory. Rather than leave the county sites exposed while patches were tested, VR Systems took the public lookup features offline.

When will the tools be back?

As of Wednesday evening, the tools remained offline and there was no confirmed restoration time. Sarasota County Supervisor of Elections spokesperson Paul Donnelly said the office hoped the tools would be back online shortly. "But I do not currently have a resolution time from the vendor," he said. Sarasota was directing voters to its call center in the meantime.

The Florida Press found no public announcement by Thursday morning, Oct. 22, that service had been restored. Voters should check their county Supervisor of Elections website or call the office directly for current status.

Evelyn Almodóvar, director of UnidosNow, a Latino education and civic engagement group, noticed the outage while working with the Hispanic Federation of Florida, Suncoast Searchlight reported. Voter outreach groups rely on the lookup tools to tell new and infrequent voters where and how to cast ballots, so the timing, at the start of early voting, put extra pressure on phone lines and volunteers.

Not the first website trouble for Florida elections

VR Systems, founded in Florida in 1992 and employee-owned since 2010, supplies voter registration software, electronic poll books and website services to election offices. In 2016 its EViD electronic poll book was used in 64 of Florida's 67 counties.

The company has faced scrutiny before. After Florida's August 2024 primary, election websites in many counties suffered outages. VR Systems said at the time that a logging error on its end was responsible, and it said there was no indication of malicious activity and that unofficial results reporting to the state was not affected, WFSU and The Associated Press reported. Broward County Supervisor of Elections Joe Scott, a critic of the vendor, moved his county's site to a new host ahead of schedule after that outage.

On Election Day in November 2024, the state's own voter information lookup suffered intermittent outages, CBS News Miami reported. The Department of State said then that voting operations had not been affected and that its site was handling record traffic.

In 2016, Russian military intelligence targeted VR Systems with a spear-phishing campaign that impersonated the company in emails to election officials. The company denied that its systems were breached, and there were no reports that the campaign succeeded.

What voters can do in the meantime

The outage does not change any voting rules or locations. Voters who cannot reach their county's lookup tool still have several options:

• Call the county Supervisor of Elections office, which can confirm early voting sites, Election Day polling places and sample ballot contents.
• Use the Florida Division of Elections voter information lookup to confirm registration status.
• Remember that during early voting, registered voters may cast a ballot at any early voting site in their county of residence.
• Bring photo and signature identification to vote in person.

Nonpartisan guides such as the League of Women Voters' VOTE411 also offer sample ballot and candidate information.

What's next

Florida's mandatory early voting period runs from Saturday, Oct. 24, through Saturday, Oct. 31, and many counties opened sites earlier. The deadline to request a vote-by-mail ballot is 5 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 22. Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 3, when voters must cast ballots at their assigned precinct.

VR Systems has said the lookup tools will return once its testing is complete. Until then, county election offices are fielding questions by phone, and the state's registration lookup remains the main online fallback.