Virginia's online voter registration shuts down on deadline after fiber optic cable is severed

(Image credit: Tasos Katopodis/Getty Image)

published 13 October 2020

Virginia's citizen portal and registrar's offices shut down Tuesday, the final day to register to vote before the November election, following a fiber optic cable cut that shut down other government agency sites, as well.

Local news station WUSA9 described the cut as accidental, and a spokeswoman for the Virginia Department of Elections said "Verizon technicians are on site and working to to repair" the severed cable. Still, the incident could affect thousands of Virginia voters, The Washington Post reports. Judy Brown, the general registrar in Virginia's Loudoun County, told the Post "we have no idea what's happening" and the disruption reportedly forced her office to manually confirm the registration status of county voters who cast early ballots Tuesday.

Virginia Beach officials have reportedly had trouble processing early ballots because of the cut. Apparently, per the Post, very few voters accepted an offer to instead fill out provisional ballots, which are typically counted last in an election, choosing to wait for the system to come back. "It's affecting everyone," said Christine Lewis, Virginia Beach's deputy registrar for elections. "Just because one wire got cut." Read more at The Associated Press and The Washington Post.

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Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.

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