A cut cable has shut down Virginia’s statewide online voter registration system, and it couldn’t have come at a worse time.
Not only is Tuesday the final day for online registration in the state, early in-person voting is also underway. The system has implications for both: With the registration system, known as VERIS, currently on the fritz, in-person voters will have to cast provisional ballots because poll workers are unable to check them in.
❗️Voters❗️
The statewide voter registration system is currently DOWN. This means that any voter coming to vote early in-person can not be checked in on the poll books & will only be able to vote a provisional ballot.
We will let you know when the system is back up & running.
— County of Albemarle (@AlbemarleCounty) October 13, 2020
The State Voter Registration System, VERIS, is experiencing a statewide outage. Any voter who wishes to vote early, in-person, can not be checked in on the poll books, and will only be able to vote a provisional ballot. https://t.co/hZWIbFvXDc
— Fluvanna County, VA (@FluvannaCounty) October 13, 2020
The outage was caused by a cut fiber in Chester, Virginia, according to WUSA9.
Technicians are on site and working to repair; updates will be provided as work progresses.
— VA Dept of Elections (@vaELECT) October 13, 2020
In-person and mail-in voter registration are still available Tuesday, but the deadline for submitting in-person registration forms is 5 p.m., while mailed-in registration forms must be postmarked by Tuesday.
Virginia is on pace to break turnout records, with early in-person voting emerging as a widely used option even as absentee voting has also surged in the pandemic.
As of Friday, 887,000 Virginians had voted early in person, a number that amounts to nearly a quarter of all the ballots cast in the state in the 2016 election.
