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IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF FLORIDA

TALLAHASSEE DIVISION

AUGUSTA SANDINO CHRISTIAN 

NAMPHY, DREAM DEFENDERS, 

NEW FLORIDA MAJORITY, 

ORGANIZE FLORIDA, and 

FLORIDA IMMIGRANT 

COALITION,

Plaintiffs,

v.

RON DESANTIS, in his official 

capacity as Governor of the State of 

Florida, and LAUREL M. LEE, in her 

official capacity as Florida Secretary of 

State,

Defendants.

Case No. _________________

COMPLAINT FOR EMERGENCY INJUNCTIVE 

AND DECLARATORY RELIEF

INTRODUCTION

1. On October 5, 2020, the last day to register to vote in the upcoming 

Presidential Election, Florida’s online voter registration (“OVR”) system crashed, 

going offline for several hours. This followed several days during which the 

system crashed intermittently. Would-be Florida voters attempting to register to 

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vote through the system were faced with error messages instead of successful

voter registrations. This is not the first time the system has crashed; the State has 

long been aware of its vulnerabilities, particularly on the final day of registration

when peak usage occurs. This time, however, the consequences are more severe

than ever, as Floridians have depended on OVR at a time when the deadly 

coronavirus pandemic requires them to quarantine at home. The result of the 

state’s failure to keep the OVR system operational was that many Floridians were 

unable to register to vote at all. Without action by this Court, these aspirational 

voters will be unable to cast a ballot in the Presidential Election and will be 

deprived of their fundamental rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

PARTIES

Plaintiffs

2. Plaintiff DREAM DEFENDERS is a Florida nonprofit corporation 

with its principal office in Miami-Dade County, Florida. The organization was 

established in 2012 following the killing of teenager Trayvon Martin and is 

directed by Black and Brown Youth. Dream Defenders uses training and 

organizing of youth and students to confront structural inequality. The 

organization conducts civic engagement activities across the state of Florida 

including voter registration and get out the vote efforts. The failure of the OVR 

system and the Defendants’ failure to extend the voter registration deadline 

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hinders the organization’s efforts to secure voter participation and impacts its 

members who need to register to vote or update their voter registrations.

3. Plaintiff NEW FLORIDA MAJORITY, INC. (“NewFM”) is a 

Florida non-profit corporation and membership organization with its principal 

office in Miami-Dade County, Florida. Founded in 2009, NewFM is dedicated to 

organizing, educating, and mobilizing disempowered communities in Florida to 

win equity and fairness throughout the State. NewFM's central focus is to expand 

democracy by ensuring that every person eligible to vote, regardless of party 

affiliation, is able to exercise his or her fundamental and constitutionally protected 

right to vote. To achieve its goal, NewFM works with individual members and 

organizations across the state of Florida engaged in civic and democratic 

endeavors to assist underserved communities in voter registration, voter education 

and get out the vote efforts. NewFM has regional focuses in North Florida (Duval 

and Leon Counties) and South Florida (Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach 

Counties). It has permanent offices in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and Jacksonville, 

and voter registration offices in Leon, Gadsden, and Palm Beach Counties. The 

failure of the OVR system and the Defendants’ failure to extend the voter 

registration deadline hinders the organization’s efforts to secure voter 

participation and impacts its members who need to register to vote or update their 

voter registrations.

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4. Plaintiff ORGANIZE FLORIDA is a community-based, nonprofit 

member organization with its principal offices in Orange County, Florida. Its 

membership consists of low- and moderate-income people dedicated to the 

principles of social, racial, and economic justice and the promotion of an equal 

and fair Florida for all. Organize Florida’s members bring communities together 

to join in the fight for safe neighborhoods, healthy families, quality education, 

good jobs, justice, equality and a more representative democracy. Organize 

Florida’s major campaigns have included supporting children and families and 

increasing Latinx voter turnout. The organization is committed to exposing 

injustice and holding Florida’s leaders accountable. The failure of the OVR 

system and the Defendants’ failure to extend the voter registration deadline

hinders the organization’s efforts to secure voter participation and impacts its

members who need to register to vote or update their voter registrations.

5. Plaintiff Florida Immigrant Coalition (“FLIC,” and together with

Dream Defenders, NewFM, and Organize Florida, “Organizational Plaintiffs”) is 

a Florida non-profit corporation representing over 66 diverse dues-paying 

member organizations in over twenty Florida counties, including communitybased organizations committed to empowering their members and communities 

through civic engagement. FLIC’s mission is to amplify the power of immigrant 

communities, to address the root causes of inequality, and to defend and protect 

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basic human rights, including the ability to labor, live and love without fear. To 

achieve its goal, FLIC supports democratic participation by encouraging 

naturalization, providing voter registration assistance to immigrant citizens, and 

leading civic engagement efforts throughout the state.

6. Plaintiff AUGUSTA SANDINO CHRISTIAN NAMPHY is a 

resident of Broward County and is a first-time registrant. He attempted to register 

to vote using the OVR system on October 5, 2020, but because of system errors 

and crashes he was unable to register before the midnight voter registration 

deadline.

7. Defendants’ failure to extend the voter registration deadline will 

frustrate Organizational Plaintiffs’ missions by interfering with their efforts to 

register voters and expand participation in the upcoming presidential election, and 

has already deprived Plaintiff Namphy of the opportunity to register and vote in 

the upcoming Presidential Election. 

Defendants

8. Defendant RON DESANTIS is sued in his official capacity as

Governor of the State of Florida. Defendant DeSantis is a person within the 

meaning of 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and acts under color of state law. As Governor of 

Florida, Defendant DeSantis is the state’s chief executive officer and is 

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responsible for the administration of all state laws, including those pertaining to 

voter registration and elections.

9. Defendant LAUREL M. LEE is sued in her official capacity as 

Florida Secretary of State. Defendant Lee is a person within the meaning of 42 

U.S.C. § 1983 and acts under color of state law. Pursuant to Florida Statute 

§ 97.012, the Secretary of State is the chief elections officer of the State and is 

responsible for the administration of state laws affecting voting and voter 

registration.

JURISDICTION

10. Plaintiffs bring this action under 42 U.S.C. §§ 1983 and 1988 to 

redress the deprivation under color of state law of rights secured by the United 

States Constitution.

11. This Court has original jurisdiction over the subject matter of this 

action pursuant to 28 U.S.C. §§ 1331 and 1343 because the matters in controversy

arise under the Constitution and laws of the United States, because Plaintiffs bring

this action to redressthe deprivation, under color of State law, of rights, privileges, 

and immunities secured by the Constitution of the United States and federal law, 

and because Plaintiffs bring this action to secure equitable relief under federal law 

providing for the protection of voting rights.

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12. This Court has personal jurisdiction over Defendants, who are sued 

only in their official capacity as officers of the State of Florida.

13. Venue is proper in this Court under 28 U.S.C. § 1391(b) because

Defendants have their place of business in Tallahassee, and a substantial part of 

the events that gave rise to Plaintiffs’ claims occurred in this judicial district.

STATEMENT OF FACTS

14. Pursuant to Fla. Stat. § 97.0525, Florida has offered online voter 

registration since October 2017. In 2018 and 2019, OVR accounted for 

approximately 17% and 8.5%, respectively, of all new voter registrations

submitted in the state.

15. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly curtailed other 

methods of registration, leading Floridians to rely much more heavily on OVR, 

which has become an even more critical point of entry for civic participation than 

usual during the COVID-19 pandemic. As of August 31, 2020, 32% of new 

registrations the state had received came from the OVR system. 

16. The COVID-19 pandemic has also shifted the voter registration 

efforts of advocacy organizations, including Organizational Plaintiffs, toward 

online registration. Over the past few months, Organizational Plaintiffs have made 

a sustained effort to connect hundreds of thousands of voters with Florida’s online 

voter registration system.

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17. For example, NewFM suspended all of its in-person voter 

registration operations immediately following the March 17, 2020, Presidential 

Preference Primary, as Florida went into lockdown due to the COVID-19 

pandemic. Florida’s OVR site became the organization’s only option for its voter 

registration work. NewFM shifted its canvassing teams to use the OVR site. 

18. Likewise, Dream Defenders built a new web portal to connect 

visitors to the organization’s website to the OVR system, and invested 

approximately $200,000 in a new phone banking initiative that allows members 

at a phone bank event to call unregistered young Floridians to encourage them to 

register using Florida’s OVR system. 

19. Similarly, Organize Florida has shifted its typical large-scale 

canvassing program to online organizing during the pandemic. The organization 

has worked to connect more than 250,000 Florida residents with the OVR system 

through phone calls and text messages since June 1, 2020, and also built its own 

landing page to route people to the OVR site.

20. Starting on Saturday, October 3, 2020, reports emerged of Florida’s 

OVR system experiencing outages as voters attempted to register in advance of 

the impending October 5th deadline.

21. On Monday, October 5, 2020, beginning around 2 p.m., and 

continuing until at least 11:30 p.m., voters in Florida and civic engagement groups 

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assisting Florida voters began experiencing sustained problems using Florida’s 

online voter registration system.

22. The problems began as intermittent error messages or failures of the 

system to respond and culminated in several extended periods when the system

was completely unavailable.

23. The errors and malfunctions took several forms. Earlier in the day, 

the system became unresponsive when voters attempted to enter their address and, 

as a result, these voters were unable to complete the application.

24. Other voters were unable to access the site at all, and instead were 

presented with one of several different error messages, including error codes 524, 

502, or 503. Some voters who received these errors were eventually able to get 

past them and access the system after repeatedly refreshing their web browsers, 

but then encountered other problems.

25. For example, Plaintiff Namphy continually received a 524 error 

message as he tried for several hours to access the OVR system. When he was 

finally able to get past that error, the system became unresponsive when he 

attempted to move past the “captcha”—the commonly encountered puzzle 

designed to verify that a person, and not a computer, is using the system—on the 

first page of the OVR system. As a result, Plaintiff Namphy was unable to register 

to vote before the deadline.

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26. Florida election officials were informed of potential problems by 

around 5 p.m. at the latest but incorrectly believed that the problem had been 

resolved.

27. At 5:57pm, Secretary Lee tweeted that “OVR is online and 

working. Due to high volume, for about 15 minutes, some users experienced 

delays while trying to register. We have increased capacity. You can register 

until midnight tonight....”1

28. Almost as soon as Secretary Lee issued these assurances, Twitter 

began to explode with reports of continuing problems, many of which were 

subsequently picked up by the news media. For example, a Tampa Bay Times 

reporter was not able to access the site on a mobile phone either right after Lee 

sent her tweet or an hour later,

2 and at 6:43pm, Florida’s Agricultural 

Commissioner Nikki Fried posted a screen shot displaying a “502” server error.

3

29. Throughout the evening, Floridians continued to tweet screen shots 

demonstrating their difficulty in using the site.

1 https://twitter.com/FLSecofState/status/1313237000716247041. 2 https://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/local/state/2020/10/05/florida-electionregister-to-vote-registration-web-site-crash-crashed-deadline-secretary-ofstate/3631938001/. 3 https://twitter.com/nikkifried/status/1313248563519008768.

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a. 6:30pm:4

b. 7:02pm:5

c. 8:36pm: From a user reporting, “We’ve been trying to get in for an 

hour now. I just keep refreshing browsers. No luck so far.”6

4 https://twitter.com/AdrianCGallo/status/1313253815076884481/photo/1. 5 https://twitter.com/gedma_/status/1313254147219693568/photo/1. 6 https://twitter.com/MrsRogersHood/status/1313277026573352965.

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d. 11:30pm: “STILL DOWN at almost 11:30pm”:7

30. State elections officials were warned well in advance that the online 

voter registration site was vulnerable to problems resulting from high usage. A 

persistent problem is that the OVR site becomes inoperative during periods of 

heavy usage, especially on or around the deadline to register to vote in an 

upcoming election, called the “book closing” day. The OVR site crashed during 

book closing before the November 2018 general election, in February 2020 before 

the PPP, and before the August 2020 primary. The site also went down on or 

around September 22, 2019, which was National Voter Registration Day, a period 

7 https://twitter.com/AshleyRoehrig/status/1313319024135110661.

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during which advocacy groups and election officials encourage voters to register, 

generating heavy traffic.

31. Florida is aware that there is increased traffic on book closing days, 

but the State has not taken steps to ensure that the site has the necessary capacity 

to accommodate the increased demand. The State had every reason to prepare for 

increased traffic before the 2020 general election in particular, given the intense 

public interest in the election and the increased reliance on OVR due to selfquarantining taking place across the state as a result of the deadly coronavirus 

pandemic, and the state’s own data showing record numbers of registrations 

coming in through OVR.

32. Problems with the website, in fact, were so predictable that Florida 

advocacy groups began preparing for a likely early-October outage as early as

July 2020. They created a messaging toolkit to inform members and other 

constituents about a (at the time hypothetical) website malfunction and encourage 

them to persevere in their efforts to register in the face of this challenge.

33. At least one civic engagement group, All Voting Is Local,sent a letter 

to Secretary Lee and Governor DeSantis in September 2020. The organization 

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identified an independent vendor to stress-test the system, but the state declined 

to cooperate.8

34. The system outages on October 5, 2020, prevented a significant 

number of eligible Floridians from registering to vote. Prior to the errors and 

outages in the OVR system, Organizational Plaintiff Florida Immigrant Coalition 

alone was registering 219 new voters per hour on the final day of registration.

35. Voters who had started voter registration applications were unable to 

complete them due to the October 5, 2020 crash. Others were not even able to get 

started. Many whose attempts were frustrated were returning citizens, individuals 

with prior convictions who had completed all terms of their sentence and were 

reenfranchised by Amendment 4 but were then disenfranchised due to the broken 

OVR system.

36. Confronted with an inoperative OVR site, some Floridians went the 

extra mile and traveled to their county Supervisor of Elections office, hoping to 

register in person. For example, Miami-Dade County’s Supervisor of Elections 

office experienced an influx of in-person voter registration when the OVR site 

crashed. Not all elections offices were open for in-person voter registration after 

hours, however.

8 https://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/local/state/2020/10/05/florida-electionregister-to-vote-registration-web-site-crash-crashed-deadline-secretary-ofstate/3631938001/.

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37. The outages also substantially disrupted voter registration 

organizations’ operations during the final push, interrupting phone banks and 

other outreach, and forcing organizations to divert staff time to troubleshoot and 

attempt to help registrants clear the burdensome hurdles erected by the faulty 

system. For example, Dream Defenders Communications Director Nailah 

Summers attempted to access the OVR site at several junctures during the evening 

of October 5, and encountered errors each time. She also spent time investigating 

the other organizations’ online registration portals to ensure the problem was not 

with the Dream Defenders website but with the OVR system itself. Florida 

Immigrant Coalition staff similarly visited other sites attempting to confirm that 

the problems were with the State’s OVR system and not unique to the

organization’s technology.

38. Organizational Plaintiffs also contacted the Secretary of State’s 

office to request that the voter registration deadline be extended to allow frustrated 

voters a meaningful opportunity to register.

39. At the time of this filing, however, despite the severe outages of the 

OVR system and notwithstanding that the state should have anticipated the 

increased demand, Defendants have failed to extend the voter registration deadline

to allow the thousands of Floridians whose voter registration efforts were stymied 

to register to vote and to participate in the 2020 Presidential Election.

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40. Now, with the deadline past, Organizational Plaintiffs have shifted 

their attention to encouraging voters who were able to register to go out and vote. 

If the registration deadline is extended, they will shift their organizers and 

canvasses back to notifying voters of the extension and assisting them with 

registering to vote, but reaching the thousands of voters who wish to participate 

in November’s election but were prevented from registering by the failure of the 

OVR system will take a significant amount of time—and the success of such 

efforts depends on the OVR system continuing to function during any additional 

registration period. 

CLAIM FOR RELIEF

Undue Burden on the Right to Vote in Violation

of the First and Fourteenth Amendment

41. Plaintiffs reallege and incorporate by reference the allegations 

contained in each of the preceding paragraphs. 

42. This Court has the authority to enter a declaratory judgment and to 

provide preliminary and permanent injunctive relief pursuant to Rules 57 and 65 

of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and 28 U.S.C. §§ 2201 and 2202.

43. Under the First Amendment and the Equal Protection Clause of the 

Fourteenth Amendment, a court considering a challenge to a state election law 

“must weigh ‘the character and magnitude of the asserted injury to the rights 

protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments that the plaintiff seeks to 

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vindicate’ against ‘the precise interests put forward by the State as justifications 

for the burden imposed by its rule,’ taking into consideration ‘the extent to which 

those interests make it necessary to burden the plaintiff’s rights.’” Burdick v. 

Takushi, 504 U.S. 428, 434 (1992) (quoting Anderson v. Celebrezze, 460 U.S. 

780, 789 (1983)). 

44. Defendants failure to extend the deadline to register to vote means 

that voters who attempted to register to vote by the deadline and, through no fault 

of their own but because a failure of the state’s OVR system, were unable to 

complete the registration process, will be wholly deprived of their fundamental 

right to vote, in violation of their rights under the First and Fourteenth 

Amendments. Such a deprivation constitutes a severe burden on the right to vote.

45. The state has no compelling--or even rational--justification for 

failing to extend the voter registration deadline in such circumstances. Indeed, in 

similar circumstances in the past, the state has extended the voter registration 

deadline. For example, in 2018, the state extended the deadline to accommodate 

the closure of Supervisors of Elections’ offices and DHSMV offices during the 

peak voter registration period due to Hurricane Michael. Given the timing of the 

outages—which occurred during a pandemic when OVR has become the primary 

method by which voters are registering and the longest of which occurred after 

the close of business on the last day of voter registration, when voters no longer 

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had the option to mail a paper voter registration application and have it 

postmarked by the deadline—there is no justification for failing to extend the 

deadline.

46. Under these circumstances, the State’s enforcement of the October 

5, 2020, voter registration deadline constitutes an undue burden on the right to 

vote. 

REQUEST FOR RELIEF

Wherefore, Plaintiffs respectfully request that this Court enter judgment:

A. Preliminarily and permanently enjoining Defendants from enforcing the 

October 5, 2020 voter registration deadline for the November 3, 2020 

General Election. 

B. Ordering Defendants to extend the deadline for Floridians to register to vote

in the November 3, 2020 General Election to midnight on the second day 

after the date of any order of the court. 

C. Ordering Defendants to publicize the extension of the voter registration 

deadline via print media, radio, the Secretary’s website, and social media 

to alert Floridians to the expanded opportunities to register.

D. Awarding Plaintiffs their costs, expenses, and reasonable attorneys’ fees 

pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1988 and other applicable laws; and

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E. Granting such other relief as the Court deems just and proper.

Dated: October 6, 2020 Respectfully submitted, 

By: /s/ Kira Romero-Craft

 Kira Romero-Craft

JEREMY KARPATKIN

Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP

601 Massachusetts Ave., NW

Washington, D.C. 20001-3743

(202) 942-5000

CHIRAAG BAINS*

Dēmos

740 6th Street NW, 2nd Floor

Washington, DC 20001

(202) 864-2746

cbains@demos.org

STUART NAIFEH*

ADAM LIOZ*

Dēmos

80 Broad St, 4th Floor

New York, NY 10004

(212) 485-6055

snaifeh@demos.org

alioz@demos.org

KIRA ROMERO-CRAFT

(FL SBN 49927)

LatinoJustice PRLDEF

523 West Colonial Drive

Orlando, Florida 32804

(321) 418-6354

kromero@latinojustice.org

GILDA DANIELS*

JORGE VASQUEZ

JENNIFER LAI-PETERSON*

SHARION SCOTT*

JESS UNGER*

Advancement Project National Office

1220 L Street N.W., Suite 850

Washington, D.C. 20005

(202) 728-

9557gdaniels@advancementproject.org

jvasquez@advancementproject.org

jlaipeterson@advancementproject.org

sscott@advancementproject.org

junger@advancementproject.org

Attorneys for Plaintiffs

*Application for admission pro hac vice 

forthcoming

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