Severed cable takes out Virginia voter site on registration deadline

Enlarge / Richmond, the capital of Virginia, looking scenic as seen from across the James River. (credit: Sky Noir Photography by Bill Dickinson | Getty Images)

Today is the last day to register to vote in the commonwealth of Virginia, so of course the official website for updating or managing voter registration is offline. Unlike in Florida, however, Virginia's site did not crash from high traffic but instead was rendered inaccessible because a vital fiber connecting the state's digital infrastructure was physically cut.

Twitter users began to notice the state's voter registration page was failing to load sometime after 8:30 this morning, and at 9:00, the state's IT agency confirmed that a severed fiber optic cable was the root of all the problems.

"A fiber cut near Rt. 10 in Chester near the Commonwealth Enterprise Solutions Center (CESC) is impacting data circuits and virtual private network (VPN) connectivity for multiple Commonwealth agencies," the Virginia Information Technologies Agency wrote in a tweet, adding, "Technicians are on site and working to repair the cut; updates will be provided as work progresses."

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