RICHMOND, VA: "A lawsuit seeking to extend Virginia’s voter registration deadline was filed Tuesday night after the state’s Department of Election’s online portal was shut down for more than five hours on the last day to register to vote. A group led by the New Virginia Majority Educational Fund filed the lawsuit seeking to extend Virginia’s voter registration deadline through Oct.15.
The outage came after a fiber cable near a Chesterfield data center that provides IT services to multiple Virginia agencies was “inadvertently” severed, causing issues with the department’s online system and other agencies’ sites.
Local general registrars said the issue did not impact early voting but prevented them from processing absentee ballot requests and voter registration updates.
“No absentee ballots or applications can be processed without the system,” Teresa Smithson, Hanover County’s elections chief, told 8News. “We cannot process applications that have been mailed or delivered to our office. All application received by 5PM today will be processed because they made the deadline.”
localdvm.com/news/lawsuit-filed-to-extend-virginias-voter-registration-deadline-after-online-system-goes-down-for-hours/