Jefferson County — Thousands of voter registration applications across Texas went unprocessed because of what the Department of Public Safety described as a system error, forcing counties to scramble to catch up with a sudden influx of paperwork.

In Jefferson County, Voter Registrar Kate Carroll said her office received more than 3,000 applications this week. Three bins of paperwork represented only a portion of the roughly 3,400 voter registration applications sent to the Jefferson County voter registrar Tuesday.

“I really hope and I’m hoping with everything that we can have it done by October 5th. But this was a huge project that was just put on us,” said Carroll, the Jefferson County tax assessor-collector and voter registrar.

DPS acknowledged the system error created a massive backlog of voter registration applications in Austin and sent the applications to counties across the state.

Carroll said the backlog has added significant work for her office. “So this put a strain of 3,400 more applications that have been held wherever they were held from DPS from July 1st of last year,” she said.

Carroll said her office had processed the number down to about 2,900 so far. She said additional staff are pitching in to help. “We have backup that are helping. So we’ve got everybody that has a spare moment to help it out. But the two that are at the computer clicking away are working their hardest,” Carroll said.

The added applications are also creating staffing and scheduling challenges, Carroll said. “So that’s going to put, over time constraints on us, that’s going to put either comp time, and having people work over the, you know, nights and weekends when they weren’t expecting to,” she said.

Despite the backlog, Carroll encouraged eligible voters to keep checking their registration status and to reapply if needed. “If they look online, they call our office and they’re like, we’re still not showing them because of the DPS backlog. Go ahead and submit another application,” she said.

Carroll said the issue will not stop a vote from counting, whether voting early or on Election Day, Nov. 3.

Anyone unsure whether they are registered to vote can call 409-835-VOTE or www.votetexas.gov.

if you already registered and need to update your name or address go to http://txapps.texas.gov/tolapp/sos/SOSACManager