On Tuesday morning, Virginia officials announced that a cut fiber was responsible for crashing the state’s voter registration website on what is the last day for potential voters to sign up.
In a tweet sent at 9 a.m., the Virginia Information Technologies Agency said the cut fiber was affecting the networks of “multiple” state agencies.
Another tweet, sent by VITA near 1 p.m., said that the Verizon fiber was “inadvertently struck” during a roadside utilities project and that “technicians continue to work diligently on a resolution.”
The Virginia Department of Elections confirmed midmorning that its Citizen Portal, the online platform it uses for voter registration, went offline due to the cut.
The most recent updates from the Department of Elections were posted on social media shortly before 10 a.m., when it said technicians were on site working to repair the problem.
Shortly after news of the statewide outage broke Tuesday, Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax (D) called for the voter registration deadline to be extended beyond Tuesday.
Later Tuesday afternoon, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D) also said he would support a court-ordered extension of the voter registration deadline.
Virginia extended that deadline in 2016 after the voter registration website crashed on the last day for registration that year and the progressive advocacy group New Virginia Majority and others sued for more time.
The state Department of Elections did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.