Voters wait in line at the North Dallas High School polling place in Dallas on Election Day Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024.
Juan Figueroa/Staff Photographer
Tens of thousands of voter registration applications filed through Texas’ online drivers license portal didn’t transmit to counties for processing over the past year, according to state and local officials.
State elections officials were working to determine the number of unsent records and transfer them to counties on Wednesday. It could amount to tens of thousands of files for some of Texas’ largest counties, said Sam Taylor, public affairs director for the Texas Association of County Election Officials, during a Wednesday press briefing.
A spokesperson for the Texas Department of Public Safety said incomplete information in some records prevented the agency from “fully transmitting” the files to the Secretary of State for processing. As a result, the voter registration information was not sent to counties for review, according to state elections director Christina Adkins.
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Transferring the files could flood local elections offices with applications to process just weeks away from the Oct. 19 start of early voting in Texas.
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 Dallas Morning News in an email.
She said voter registration applications filed through the in-person drivers license process were not affected.
While the error could mean tens of thousands of backlogged applications for larger counties, Taylor said it could also add hundreds more applications to sort through for small counties.
The processing error could have prevented some eligible voters from casting ballots during the March primary, said Chris McGinn, executive director of the Texas Association of County Election Officials.
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Backlogged applications date from October 2025 to Sept. 13, 2026, Taylor said.
“I voted” stickers at the Dallas county elections training/warehouse facility in Dallas, Texas on Sept. 13, 2024.
Azul Sordo/Staff Photographer
In a Sept. 16 email to officials, Adkins said the state’s voter registration system vendor, Civix, “recently” brought the issue to her office’s attention.
The DPS spokesperson did not clarify what type of information was missing that led to voter files not being transmitted, but the department said “the system issue has been resolved.”
Many of the backlogged applications from DPS might be redundant if voters completed applications or updated information after their attempts through the online drivers license process.
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As local officials receive the backlogged records, they will also need to cross-reference them with newer updates to voter registrations, Adkins told county officials in a Tuesday email.
Dallas County Elections Administrator Paul Adams did not respond to questions on Wednesday about how many of these backlogged applications the county received this week for processing.
In the Tuesday email to county officials, Adkins wrote that her office is “working with DPS to ensure that the modifications they made to their system to address this issue are not impacting daily files going forward.”
McGinn recommended residents call local elections offices to check their registration status and to resubmit an in-person application if needed before the Oct. 5 registration deadline. They can also use an online voter lookup tool, if available in their county.
Voters who registered through DPS’s online portal but do not appear on the rolls may cast a provisional ballot, Pierce said.
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McGinn said the error places huge administrative burdens on local officials, but he’s hopeful they can process the influx of applications before polls open.
“There’s going to be a lot of counties that are paying a lot of overtime,” he said.