Virginia Shuts Down Elections Site Ahead of Key Republican Deadline

Virginia's Department of Elections shut down its voter information portal for "scheduled maintenance" during the final day Republican voters in the commonwealth's largest county were able to register for the party's upcoming convention.

The website was taken down on April 9, a day before the April 10 deadline for Republicans in Fairfax County to register to participate in next month's nominating convention. When voters attempted to locate their required voter number on the state government's website, an error page read, "We are in the process of performing updates to the Citizen Portal. Due to these changes, the Citizen Portal is temporarily unavailable."

Virginia Republicans are nominating their candidates for governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general at convention sites across the commonwealth on May 8, rather than using the state's primary system that Democrats utilize. Mike Beer, a longtime Fairfax County voter, missed the deadline to register for the nominating convention due to the website's outage. "Virginia voters don't carry their voter ID numbers around on them in case the state's computer system is on the blink," Beer told the Washington Free Beacon. "It's all too cute but the end result is that I missed the convention deadline because I couldn't furnish the state ID number."