VA Voter Registration Deadline Extended After Online Portal Issue

VIRGINIA — The deadline for Virginia residents to register to vote has been extended to 11:59 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 15, according to Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring. Voter registration can be done through the Virginia Department of Elections online portal or at your local registrar's office.

Herring said his brief filed in court calling for an extension has been approved by a federal judge at a 9 a.m. hearing in the Eastern District of Virginia. When calling for the court-ordered extension, Herring said the registration system outage prevented Virginians from registering on the deadline. The attorney general's brief was in response to a lawsuit filed by several Virginia voter advocacy organizations.

"We are 21 days away from the most important election of our lifetimes and I want to make sure that every Virginian who wants to vote has the opportunity to do so," said Herring.

The extension comes after the Virginia Department of Elections' online portal for voter registration and other voter tools was down for much of Tuesday, which was set as the last day to register to vote or update an address for the Nov. 3 election. The online portal was back up as of 3:26 p.m. Tuesday after being down for part of the day. The online portal allows residents to register to vote, check their voter information or request an absentee ballot. The deadline to request an absentee ballot by mail is 5 p.m. on Oct. 23.

On Tuesday morning, the Virginia Department of Elections said a fiber cut near Route 10 in Chester near the Commonwealth Enterprise Solutions Center impacted data circuits and virtual private network connectivity for multiple Commonwealth of Virginia agencies. That included the elections department's online citizen portal and local registrar's offices.

The Virginia Information Technologies Agency later reported the fiber had been "inadvertently struck" in relation to a roadside utilities project. Technicians have been on site to conduct repair work.

Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam addressed the situation in a Tuesday news conference.

"We have been exploring all of our options to extend the voter registration deadline," said Northam. "That deadline is set in our code and it does not appear that I have the authority to change it. That is up to the courts, and I would support a court-ordered extension of the deadline."

Secretary of Administration Keyanna Conner noted that the cut occurred on a circuit installed this spring to handle an increased workload due to COVID-19.

"Later today we hopefully will have a temporary solution in place by 4 p.m. that will bring our services back online while Verizon continues to work on a permanent full repair of the circuit," said Conner.

Several jurisdictions reported that the website problem affected their in-person early voting. Albemarle County tweeted that while the statewide voter registration system is down, any person coming in for early in-person voting cannot be checked on the poll books and can only cast a provisional ballot.

The Virginia Beach Voter Registration & Elections provided more information on how provisional ballots work.