An accidentally cut cable has caused the entire Virginia voter registration online system to go down

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

Tweet text: Eric Garland
@ericgarland
What a strange coincidence. GET IT YET?

WUSA9
@wusa9
#BREAKING; An accidentally cut cable has caused the entire Virginia voter registration online system to go down on the last day to register to vote before election day.

Here's what we know so far ⬇️

https://wusa9.com/article/news/local/virginia/virginia-voter-registration-site-down-on-last-day-to-register-to-vote-officials-say/65-3e5b390b-3e47-4a22-a440-6afddf770f3a

[Sogo]

1. Timing is too coincidental....

I smell GOP interference.

They should ask for an additional day.

[TheBlackAdder]

15. Just Kidding.

.



.

[vlyons]

2. There are no accidents!

The cable didn't cut itself. And why is there no emergency backup system?

[underpants]

5. Digging crew near Hopewell/Chester

According to emails a friend is getting

[Newest Reality]

7. Interesting...

I guess we need to know if Miss Utility was not consulted and if so, how was this not noted.

[underpants]

23. See post 22. Chesterfield Co utility. Rte. 10 right in front of VITA HQ

[durablend]

13. Was Barr driving it?

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

28. Good point

Speaking as one in the telecommunications business fiber optic routes are usually done in a ring. This offers redundancy. If one part of the fiber is dug up the data can take the other route.

Sounds like someone was building on the cheap.

[underpants]

3. Yep. Cut near Hopewell

All state email and network are down.

[live love laugh]

4. Accidentally my ass❗️

[CountAllVotes]

6. Accident my arse!

What a load of B.S. to cover-up the arse of a criminal!

[CentralMass]

8. Well imagine that.

[The Magistrate]

9. Florida's Went Down Too On The Last Day, Ma'am, Did It Not?

"Once is happenstance, twice may be coincidence, three times is enemy action."

[Nevilledog]

11. It did, my dear.

[magicarpet]

10. The Putie Plan for total Russian Mafia World Dommination.

[SoonerPride]

12. "Accidentally."

uh huh, sure

[Bayard]

14. Is there a clue as to when it will be back up?

[Hoyt]

16. Hopefully, few people waited until very last minute to register.

Fortunately, the Va Secretary of State is a Democrat. Maybe sometime can be done. Next time, don’t wait. It’s too important.

[LisaL]

17. It's not just registration, sounds like they can't early vote right now either, because of that

cable.

[Doreen]

18. Accident

Bull f**king shit!

[Nay]

19. I live in VA, and the voting system has always been pretty reliable and not tampered with.

Even though the area where the line was cut (Chester) is basically a hotbed of Trumpers, I don't see this as a deliberate act. Why not? Well, they wouldn't know what/where to cut, for one thing. Secondly, it's the last day to register -- not a very effective sabotage, and since many local businesses are howling for their computer access back, it will be fixed really fast. Plus, I do expect there to be added days to register after the system is back on line.

[onenote]

20. There you go. Raining on the tin foil brigade.

[Nay]

27. LOL! God knows these Pub assholes will do anything, but this is not one of the things.

First, they're too stupid.
Second, it was a company doing a roadside utility project, not terrorists, who accidentally cut the fiber optic cable.
Third, the Dems in charge of the elections have already requested more time for people to register after cable is fixed.

[jmowreader]

21. It's a buried fiber optic cable

Probably cut by a backhoe because someone was too stupid to call a utility locating service first. Fortunately, they have paper forms for backup, Verizon is working to fix the cable and the governor, light governor and Secretary of State are all Democrats. So, it’s not the end of the world.

[underpants]

22. Yep. Chesterfield Co. utilities off Rte. 10. Outside VITA headquarters

VITA, if you don’t know, is the Commonwealths outsourced (Gov. Mark Warner) tech phone printer operation. Was Northrup Grumman’s now Iron Bow, SAIC, and Xerox

[CentralMass]

24. Back in the 80's I worked for a fiber optics company that had a field service group

that installed some long haul fiber optic cable networks. They were called out to a site out west someplace where the the network had an outage. The cable ran underground adjacent to some railroad tracks. A crew had been installing some type of fencing that used steel I-beans that get driven into the ground with a hydraulic pile-driver. We used equipment like OTDR (optical time domain reflectonomy).
The equipment would inject a pulse of laser light into the cable and measure it's reflection as it bounced back. The equipment could then measure a number of transmission parameters and accurately determine where break were located. The field service team connected it and quickly foud a break a few hundred meters away right where a guard rail post was. The guard rail contractor had driven the posts directly on the cable severing it in multiple spots along the stretch of track. The were given instruction to not place them in that location but misinterpreted the directions and drove the posts right on it.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

30. I used to work for Verizon

They were pretty good about making their systems redundant to avoid such an outage.

Someone dropped the ball in this case.

[GenX_Dem]

25. I'm a network engineer for a large health care company in VA.

We work with government entities all the time, whether state or federal. The first thing you discover when working with government networks is that they are horrible. They haven't been updated in 20 years or longer, they have no disaster recovery plans and will not spend the money for redundancy. We have 12 hospitals in our network and 188 small medical offices, a single cut fiber would not cause an outage to any of them because of our built in redundancies.

Unfortunately, because of how fragile, antiquated and poorly designed government systems are, anyone who wishes to sabotage them would find it exceedingly easy.

[obamanut2012]

26. same thing happened here in Florida

so obvious.

[Hekate]

29. My stars, what a coinkydink

[RichardRay]

31. I.T. Guy, here...

I’d have some pretty firm words with whoever plans and implements the state’s network infrastructure. I ran I.T. for a company with about 1,000 employees. I’d have had my *ass* kicked if I’d run the company’s Internet connection on a non-redundant link. I’d have thought the State of Virginia would do better.

That said, the reason I had multiple connections (different providers, maps showing fiber in trenches at least 20’ apart, separately switched) was that backhoes seem to come equipped with fiber optic cable locators, which operators use to locate and cut networks. Im certain the equipment in Virginia is similar.

[DFW]

32. Accidentally

About as accidental as the invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939

Republicans are SUCH sleazebags.