On thelast dayfor occupant across Virginia to file to vote in the come election , multiple site house the state ’s voter registration portal were abruptly knocked offline . Now , local authorities are pin the blame on a mysteriously cut fiber optic cable .
The news hail courtesy of Virginia ’s Department of Elections , whichtweeted outearlier today that the Virginia Information Technologies Agency ( VITA ) had traced the outages back to a cut fiber cable near the Commonwealth Enterprise Solutions Center , a nearly 200,000 square - foot data center in Chester that has served Virginia ’s state delegacy forover a decade . fit in to the Department of Elections , the cold shoulder cable length bolt down the voter registration portal and also “ impacted ” the website for the local elector ’s registration office .
“ Technicians are on land site and working to repair ; update will be provided as work progresses , ” the agency add , in a tweet timestamped just before 10 a.m. ET on Tuesday sunup . As of this piece of writing , both sites still return a varlet apologizing that the citizen portal site is unavailable due to a “ internet outage . ”
Photo: Sarah Silbiger (Getty Images)
It is currently unreadable who disregard the fiber optic line or how it was cut .
This break of the day we were alerted by VITA that a fiber cut near the Commonwealth Enterprise Solutions Center was touch data circuit and VPN connectivity for multiple agencies . This has affect the citizen portal along w/ registrar ’s offices .
— VA Dept of Elections ( @vaELECT)October 13 , 2020
Neither section offer a timeline for when either website might be expected to be on-line , and neither department react to Gizmodo ’s request for comment on whether these portals might come back online before end of day .
Just in casing , it ’s worthpointing outhere that Virginia residents can still show to vote in person through a local recorder ’s office , or by printing out a elector adjustment program program and mailing it into their local board by the death of today . ( It must be postmarked for Tuesday , Oct. 13 , 2020 . ) Virginia Lt . Governor Justin Fairfax has alsocalled for the stateto extend its elector registration deadline , but you should n’t count on that happening .
After Florida ’s own voter enrolment portal go down in other October due to traffic flood its situation , the State Department ’s governor and secretaire of state both pleaded with federal authority to prolong their own elector registration deadline . Last week , a Union judgeofficially turned them down , on the grounds that the country ’s failure “ to figure out how to run an election properly ” should n’t be grounds for an extended registration windowpane .
But to put it bluntly , a web site ’s failure to handle a little chip more traffic than usual is more than a slight different than the site ’s strong-arm base being literally severed , which think of Virginia ’s case will probably be looked at a bit other than than Florida ’s .
We ’ve reach out to spokespeople at both VITA and the Virginia Department of Elections for comment , and will update this story if we hear back .
Election 2020virginia
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