Ariana Grande can’t pack stadiums or arenas now, so she’ll have to settle for crashing websites to make an impact. The pop star had a big role in taking down Florida’s voter registration website on Monday. The 27-year-old singer took to Instagram and Twitter to tell her followers from the Sunshine State to vote. “Fellow Floridians, we need you. Today is the last day to register to vote. If you haven’t yet or if you know of a friend or family member that hasn’t, it’s imperative that you make sure they register today because Florida has the potential of swaying the election.”
Monday was initially the final day to register for the upcoming election in Florida, but not long after Grande sent her message out, the site began experiencing issues due to an “unprecedented” surge in traffic. Grande has 77.5 million followers on Twitter and 203 million followers on Instagram.
The website problems prompted the state to extend the voter registration deadline by almost 24 hours, according to the Orlando Sentinel. The state’s chief information officer pushed back on the pop-star message being the cause, saying the glitches were more a product of misconfigured servers than high traffic.
The spike in traffic was such an unusual situation for the state that it actually worked with law enforcement to rule out the chance that it was a cyberattack.
Upon learning of the crash, Grande tweeted “Yikes #VoterSuppression, @GovRonDeSantis please extend registrations.”
While Ariana may enjoy taking all the credit, there were many factors at play in the website crash. An ad blitz targeting Florida voters to register and vote, campaigns imploring people to sign up before registration ended and many people who simply waited until the last minute likely all contributed to the problems. But I think we can all agree those other reasons aren’t as interesting.
Add comment