EDITOR'S NOTE: A federal judge has ordered that Virginia's deadline to register voters be extended to 11:59 p.m. Friday, Oct. 21. To be eligible to vote in the Nov. 8 presidential and general election, you must register by the deadline. Applications to register to vote are available at state Department of Motor Vehicles office, public libraries and other government offices or in the local voter registrar's office. Mailed applications must be postmarked by the deadline. You also may apply online. Questions? Contact the Virginia Department of Elections, www.elections.virginia.gov or call (800) 552-9745 and select Option 1. Richmond residents can go to the Richmond Voter Registrar's Office at City Hall, 900 E. Broad St., to register to vote.

Virginia could become the latest state under federal court order to extend voter registration because of a disaster.

The disaster in Virginia, however, is no hurricane, but a computer system.

Hit by a last-minute flood of people trying to register to vote online by the Oct. 17 deadline, the state’s computer system crashed Monday and refused to accept registrations for much of the final day.

It’s a huge embarrassment for Gov. Terry McAuliffe, who has fought to expand voting, and for the state Department of Elections, its commissioner, Edgardo Cortés, and his staff, who apparently failed to prepare for the surge in registration despite warnings from local registrars across the state.

The Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law rushed to the courthouse Tuesday evening to file a lawsuit seeking to force the state Department of Elections to reopen the voting rolls for three additional days.

Nationwide, voter interest, registration and turnout is greater during presidential election years than other times. Federal courts in North Carolina and Florida extended voter registration deadlines in those states because of shutdowns associated with Hurricane Matthew.

As yet, no date has been set for a hearing in the federal district court in Alexandria. However, the suit is expected to move quickly now that Virginia Attorney General Mark R. Herring disclosed he would not fight the effort to extend the registration deadline.

In response to a Free Press query, a spokesman for Mr. Herring stated Wednesday: “In light of the significant technical malfunctions that prevented Virginians from registering to vote, the Commonwealth will not object to the request for a temporary extension of the voter registration deadline.”

The lawsuit appears to be the only remedy for would-be voters who were blocked from registering.

Both the governor and Mr. Cortés separately noted Tuesday that neither has authority under state law to extend the registration deadline, even after a disaster.

The Washington-based civil rights group stated that the lawsuit “seeks to prevent the disenfranchisement of eligible prospective voters in Virginia, whose right to vote has been impeded due to technological problems with and the systemic breakdown of Virginia’s online voter registration website, and the refusal of defendants to remedy the situation.”

“Under state law, the voter registration deadline for Virginia residents was Monday, October 17. Eligible citizens who failed to register by 11:59 p.m. on that date cannot cast a ballot that will count in the upcoming November 2016 general election,” the suit continues.

The system’s crash “is just the sort of thing that general registrars have worried would happen,” said Kirk Showalter, Richmond’s voter registrar.

At the same time the system to register voters went south, she and other registrars were having problems trying to process absentee ballot applications.

“We were told by the state Department of Elections to focus on absentee ballot applications and to stop processing voter registration applications,” she said. “It didn’t help.”

She said processing of a single absentee ballot application could take five minutes or more. She said it took five hours of overtime to finish the work Monday.

Ms. Showalter said she and other registrars are now worried that the state system could crash again on Saturday, Oct. 29, or on Saturday, Nov. 5, two big days for absentee voting. She noted that registrars would be inputting massive numbers of absentee ballot applications on the Nov. 5 deadline for walk-ins.

“If we can’t process absentee voters,” she said, “all we could do is give a provisional ballot,” potentially creating a problem after Election Day when those ballots would have to be sorted and counted by hand.

She said there is concern about whether the state system would be operating properly on Sunday, Nov. 6, when registrars across the state will be downloading voter information into electronic poll books.

According to Ms. Showalter, the crash on Monday is an extreme example of the problems she and others have been experiencing for months.

Mr. Cortés told a General Assembly committee last week that the problem has been funding. He said his department sought more than $7 million to make improvements to the computer system, but the state failed to provide the money because of other priorities.

According to Ms. Showalter, the department has been applying patches to the computer system to overcome problems that have developed.

For example, “we can’t run reports during the day,” she said. “Some reports used to verify daily activity are being scheduled for 3 a.m.” to help prevent the state system from getting overloaded.

She said registrars will have their fingers crossed on Election Day, hoping that the system will be able to handle the number of information requests that will be made, and that the state computer system will not crash when the results are being entered.