Update on Oct. 14:

A federal judge in Richmond ruled Wednesday morning that Virginia must extend online and in-person voter registration until 11:59 p.m. on Oct. 15.

Original story continues below.

Voter advocates filed a lawsuit Tuesday to extend Virginia’s deadline for voter registration by two days after an online registration portal was down for hours during the last day for registering. The crash was caused by a cut fiber optic cable and was not resolved until the afternoon.

“Eligible Virginia citizens should not have to pay the price for this technological failure. Unless the voter registration deadline is extended to October 15, 2020, Plaintiffs’ members and others will be deprived of their constitutional right to vote in the November 3, 2020, election,” reads the suit filed by the New Virginia Majority Education Fund, the Virginia Civic Engagement Table and the League of Women Voters of Virginia.

The lawsuit came after hours of confusion and frustration three weeks ahead of Election Day.

Problems erupted early Tuesday morning when voters noticed they could not access online registration. The Virginia Information Technologies Agency said the problem was due to a Verizon fiber optic cable that “had been inadvertently struck” during work on a utilities project off Rt. 10 in Chester, Virginia. According to Andrea Gaines, a spokesperson for the Virginia Board of Elections, the fiber cable impacted “data circuits and virtual private network (VPN) connectivity for multiple Commonwealth agencies,” including local registrar’s offices.

With online registration impossible, voters could still register in person or by mail. That prompted the Arlington League of Women Voters to offer to help, writing on Twitter, “WE NEED TO WALK PAPER REGISTRATIONS TO THE REGISTRAR BY 5P.”

Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax (D) demanded a deadline extension, 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. We will work with the Administration to resolve this issue.”

Hours ticked by as technicians worked to fix the problem. The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a national legal civil rights organization, filed the suit on behalf of the Virginia groups. Chief counsel Jon Greenbaum told DCist/WAMU that the group would seek to repeat its success in 2016, when it obtained a 36-hour extension after online registration crashed in a similar last-minute disaster.

“Back in 2016, the state wasn’t able to handle the crush of people who were trying to register to vote on the last day,” Greenbaum said.

He estimated an additional 30,000 Virginians were registered four years ago due to the extension.

The portal was still down when Gov. Ralph Northam (D) spoke to reporters Tuesday afternoon. In his first public appearance since testing positive for the coronavirus in late September, Northam said he would support a court order to extend voter registration, noting that he was powerless to bring about a solution.

“That deadline is set in our code and it does not appear that I have authority to change it,” Northam told reporters Tuesday.

By the time the Department of Elections restored service on Tuesday afternoon, most of the final registration day had gone by. Voters could still register until 11:59 p.m., but Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring (D) tweeted that he had “deep concerns.”

He later announced in response to the lawsuit that he agrees with the plaintiffs.

Herring said he was working to secure a court order to extend the deadline by two days, and announced a hearing would be held at 9:00 a.m. Wednesday in the Eastern District of Virginia.

U.S. Reps. Don Beyer, Gerry Connolly and Jennifer Wexton demanded an extension of 72 hours, saying in a statement, “We hope the courts will swiftly grant such an extension, and we hope they will take into account the disruptions to registration that have already occurred and the time that it will take to inform the public about new opportunities to register.”

The problems with online registration added to an extraordinary year in Virginia voting. New laws allowed for no-excuse absentee and early voting beginning in mid-September. Close to a million people – about one in eight Virginians – have already cast ballots, sometimes lining up for hours weeks ahead of Election Day..

Craig Fifer, a spokesman for the City of Alexandria, said the cut fiber cable impacted early voting in other jurisdictions, in addition to its challenges to voter registration.

“The statewide registration database is currently down, but we are able to process voters for in-person voting routinely,” Fifer wrote DCist/WAMU in an email during the Tuesday outage. “Some jurisdictions that are checking voters directly into the statewide registration system are having them cast provisional ballots, but that’s not the case in Alexandria.”

Without a deadline extension, Virginia voters had a slim window to register. Unlike D.C. and Maryland, which allow voters same-day registration in early voting and on Election Day, Virginia holds October 13 as a hard stop. Barring any court action, Virginians had until just before midnight Tuesday to register to vote – or risk losing their chance to influence the 2020 election.

This story was updated to include information about litigation, resumption of service and comment from the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring and Virginia members of Congress.