Voting machines, Thursday, Oct. 6, 2022 at Dallas County Election Center in Dallas.
Rebecca Slezak/Staff Photographer
Less than a month before early voting begins, Dallas County elections officials are sorting through 68,104 voter registrations that were filed through Texas’ online drivers license portal since October 2025 but never transmitted to the county, a spokesperson confirmed.
In Collin County, officials received more than 40,000 backlogged files this week, said Elections Administrator Kaleb Breaux.
While the technical debacle originating at the Texas Department of Public Safety is landing on the shoulders of counties across the state before the midterms, local officials say they plan to rectify the problem before the first day of early voting Oct. 19.
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“Dallas County Elections is committed to ensuring every eligible voter registration record is processed accurately and timely,” spokesperson Nic Solorzano said.
Officials from DPS and the Texas Secretary of State’s office have yet to explain exactly how the errors occurred for nearly a year without detection.
In a statement to The Dallas Morning News, a DPS spokesperson said “incomplete information in some records” prevented the department from “fully transmitting” the files to the secretary of state for processing.
State elections director Christina Adkins told county officials in a Sept. 16 email that a vendor “recently” alerted the secretary of state to the issue regarding DPS files and that counties were reporting older DPS registrations appearing in their systems. Adkins wrote in another email on Tuesday the issue prevented voter registration information from being sent to counties for review.
The problem was first reported publicly on Tuesday by Votebeat Texas.
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If applications submitted through DPS are marked with a transaction date before the voter registration deadline of Oct. 5, they will be valid for the Nov. 3 election, secretary of state spokesperson Alicia Pierce told The News in an email.
In jurisdictions like Dallas and Collin counties, which store voter registrations separately from Texas’ statewide system, officials must identify any voters who registered through the elections offices after their failed attempts through DPS.
Solorzano said the department will not need to pay staff overtime to sort through the files.
In Collin County, Breaux said his office will make “whatever time necessary to review” the more than 40,000 records transmitted to his office this week.
Voters who registered through DPS’s online portal but do not appear on the rolls may cast a provisional ballot.
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“Our office reviews every provisional ballot cast to ensure that the correct determination is made to count each ballot, if it is eligible to be counted,” Breaux said.
Breaux said updated records for eligible voters can be pushed through the check-in pollbooks even after the voting period has begun.
Voters may check their registration status online in both Dallas and Collin counties.
Jon Abel of Richardson learned this week his son was one of tens of thousands of voters across Texas whose attempts to register to vote through Texas DPS’s online portal failed.
In July, a month before Daniel Abel turned 18, he tried to prepare by renewing his drivers license online and checking a box to also register to vote.
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His driver’s license arrived in the mail within a month, but his voter registration never showed up on Dallas County’s verification website, according to his father.
When Jon Abel called Dallas County’s elections office Aug. 28 to check on his son’s status, he said the representative couldn’t find a pending application.
“The woman there was very helpful but said this happens all the time and to just send in a separate registration,” Abel said.
Solorzano did not respond to a question about instances of his office noticing this issue before this week.
Jon Abel said his son’s registration application went through after they mailed it in to the elections office. He is registered to vote in time for the midterms and the start of his freshman year at Concordia University Texas in Austin.
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Others may still be waiting.
“I’m glad it has finally come to light that the problem has been found,” Jon Abel said. “Hopefully it’s going to be fixed.”
Staff writer William Tong contributed to this report.