Voting rights groups sue to extend Virginia registration deadline after system crashed on final day
The groups are asking that the deadline be extended by 48 hours after officials said a cut data connection caused the citizen portal to go offline for much of the day Tuesday.
Gov. Ralph Northam said Tuesday that his office is “exploring all of our options to extend” the deadline for voters to register, but he did not believe he could act unilaterally.
Northam added that he would support a court decision to extend the deadline.
Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring said he has filed a brief with the court agreeing with the plaintiffs’ complaint and asking the court to extend the online voter registration deadline.
“We need to make up for the time lost today. We have 21 days until the most important election of our lifetimes and I want to make sure every eligible Virginian who wants to vote can,” he said in a tweet.
The suit was filed by Virginia Civic Engagement Table, New Virginia Majority, League of Women Voters of Virginia, Advancement Project National Office, and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.
The groups are also asking Virginia to undertake a public campaign to help notify Virginians of this change.
A hearing on the matter is scheduled for Wednesday morning in the Eastern District of Virginia District Court in Richmond before Judge John A. Gibney, Jr.
Voter registration system failures
The online voter registration system — which is used for first time registrations, registration updates, absentee ballot applications and polling location lookup — was out for more than six hours Tuesday afternoon.
The Virginia Information Technologies Agency said the outage was a result of “activities related to a Chesterfield County roadside utilities project” near its facility and that a fiber line was cut.
The state’s IT agency said it “has restored network connectivity” to the impacted systems.
Officials in Florida are also dealing with the fallout from a voter registration computer system failure.
They issued a short extension of the registration window, but a federal court turned down a petition to grant a longer extension.
The judge noted in a blistering opinion that Florida, home to NASA space launch facilities, has chronic election issues.
“Florida has failed to figure out how to run an election properly — a task simpler than rocket science,” Judge Mark E. Walker wrote.
CNN’s Mary Kay Mallonee contributed to this report.
