Virginia will extend voter registrations extra 48 hours after outage

A judge in Virginia has extended voter registration by 48 hours after the website voters use to register was down for six hours on the final day of registration, causing what the judge described as “tremendous harm.”

A cut cable brought the website down on Tuesday. A similar incident occurred in 2016, when the registration site crashed on the final day to register. A judge ordered the extension in 2016 after civil rights groups sued.

Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax (D) called for an extension of the deadline on Tuesday soon after the website crashed, tweeting, “I am officially calling for Virginia’s Registration Deadline to be extended beyond today due to the service outages impacting voters’ ability to register statewide.”

The Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the same group that sued for voter registration extension in 2016, sued again to secure the extension. In a filing, the group argued, “Eligible United States citizens who were unable to register by October 13, 2020 due to the OVR system crashing, will be unable to exercise their right to cast a ballot in the upcoming 2020 general election on November 3, 2020.”

Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring (D) announced on Twitter that he had also filed a brief to extend the 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 tweeted.

BREAKING I’ve filed a brief asking the Court to extend the 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. pic.twitter.com/LCqU7IZ5o6

— Mark Herring (@MarkHerringVA) October 14, 2020

A record number of voters are expected to turn out this year, according to the University of Florida’s Michael McDonald, who heads the United States Elections Project. As many as 150 million people — 65 percent of eligible voters — could be casting their ballots this year. This would the highest percentage of voters to participate since 1908.

According to FiveThirtyEight, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden currently has a 12-point lead against President Trump in Virginia, which has voted for the Democratic nominee in the past three presidential elections.