It’s just days before early voting begins in Virginia, but a Department of Elections webpage intended for Spanish-speaking voters does not have current information about key election dates, candidate lists, or the new same-day registration process.

The website’s Spanish-language landing page — which users can find by clicking on “En Español” in the upper lefthand corner of the department’s English site — tells voters that early voting begins on Friday, Sept. 23, which is correct. The landing page also includes current “upcoming dates” for the end of early voting on Nov. 5.

But subsequent links to “more information” from that page lead to out-of-date information. A “next elections” link on the elections calendar page leads to information about a June 2021 contest for local office in Tazewell, Virginia. A link to a list of candidates also leads to information about the same Tazewell election.

There is also no mention in the Spanish-language section of the department’s website about a major change in Virginia voter access this election season, which officially takes effect next month: for the first time, voters will be able to register on Election Day and vote a provisional ballot, which will be counted if elections officials find their registration to be valid.

“The Department of Elections continuously audits and updates the content of its website and makes every effort to ensure it is translated into four languages, which include English, Spanish, Vietnamese and Korean,” said Andrea Gaines, a spokesperson for the department, via email. “We are currently in the process of reviewing all aspects of the website and are committed to providing election resources in multiple languages for Virginians.”

But that continuous process has not addressed that some key pages on the Spanish-language site have not been updated for more than a year.

Gaines said a frequently asked questions page explaining the new process would be translated and posted soon.

Between June 2021, when pages in the Spanish-language section appear to be last updated, and now, Virginia has had several important elections. They include the November 2021 gubernatorial contest — a remarkably close race which saw record voter turnout and significantly altered the balance of power in Richmond — and primary elections in June 2022 for candidates to appear on the ballot in November’s general election. In the timespan, the department of elections has been overseen by governors Ralph Northam, a Democrat, and Glenn Youngkin, a Republican.

Latinx people are the fastest-growing ethnic group in Virginia, and increasingly influential in state elections. The commonwealth’s Latinx population grew by 44% between the 2010 Census and 2020 Census. In Northern Virginia, Hispanic or Latino people make up nearly 20% of the population.

The Department of Elections also publishes election information in translation in Vietnamese and Korean. Asians account for 16.6% of Northern Virginia’s population, according to an analysis of 2020 Census data from the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments.

This is far from the first time the state government in Virginia has struggled to provide accurate information in translation to residents who need it. In January 2021, state officials admitted they’d used Google to translate information about vaccines into Spanish — and inadvertently told Spanish-language readers that they didn’t need the vaccine, according to The Virginian-Pilot. Early on in the pandemic, advocates expressed frustration that the Virginia Department of Health’s COVID-19 data dashboard included very little racial and ethnic information.

“I think the state government needs to be doing a much better job of addressing translation services that are incredibly important for citizens in every corner of the Commonwealth,” said Del. Alfonso Lopez (D-Arlington).

Macaulay Porter, a spokesperson for Gov. Glenn Youngkin, noted in a statement that Youngkin was hosting a listening session for Hispanic Virginians as part of National Hispanic Heritage Month. “The Youngkin administration and the Department of elections are committed to providing Spanish language resources for Virginians,” she wrote in an email.

In the lead-up to early voting, Virginia political leadership, including Youngkin, have focused particular attention on reassuring voters of the security of the commonwealth’s election process, even as Republicans across the country and in Virginia continue to feed the lie that the election in 2020 was stolen. Earlier in the month, Attorney General Jason Miyares announced the launch of an Election Integrity Unit designed to “restore confidence in our democratic process in the Commonwealth,” according to the announcement.

The ACLU of Virginia and the commonwealth’s branch of the NAACP have called for a disbanding of the unit in favor of focusing resources on increasing voter participation and rooting out voter suppression, an argument Lopez said he agreed with in light of the problems with the Department of Elections’ Spanish-language website.

“In Virginia, we should be doing everything we can to increase overall voter participation,” Lopez told DCist/WAMU. “We should not be taking any actions, intentionally or unintentionally, to suppress the vote. Something like this needs to be fixed. Yesterday.”

Teresa Frontado and Martin Austermuhle contributed to this story.