The deadline for registering to vote in Virginia has officially been extended to 11:59 PM on Thursday, October 15, Virginia Attorney General Mark R. Herring announced on Twitter on Wednesday morning. The decision comes after multiple groups sued the state for a deadline extension due to a major outage that shut down online voter registration on Tuesday, caused by an accidentally severed fiber-optic cable in Chesterfield County. That one disrupted cable led to an hours-long system crash that prevented Virginians from registering to vote the day before the initial October 13 deadline.
Virginia Governor Ralph Northam explained that the cut cable was due to a road work accident near Route 10 yesterday and said he was in support of the extension, but he did not have the power to make the call himself, according to the Washington Post; the decision would have to come through a court order.
Rosa is a senior editor at Bitch Magazine. She’s written for Washingtonian and Smithsonian magazine.
