Travis County election staff have processed more than 32,000 delayed voter registration records from the Texas Department of Public Safety.
In late September, the Texas secretary of state told county and election officials that DPS failed to send voter registration records to counties across the state. It forced election officials into overdrive to process the registrations in time for the November elections.
“To complete this monumental, but critical work, we expedited training approvals from the Secretary of State and leveraged employees from other divisions within the tax office willing to work nights and weekends,” said Celia Israel, Travis County tax assessor-collector, in a press release..
While the backlog from DPS has been cleared, the work isn’t over yet.
The office still has about 20,000 voter registration applications to process, following Monday’s deadline to register to vote in the midterms.
“There are boxes and boxes and boxes of paper sitting in my office,” Israel told KUT News.
Texas doesn’t have widespread online voter registration, meaning every form has to be reviewed by hand.
“We have to squint our eyes and say, ‘I don’t know, is that apartment number 10 or apartment number B?’ So, it’s very painful. It’s very detailed, but it’s the law,” she said.
With early voting starting Oct. 19, the office said it will need to work long hours to update the voter roll in time.
You can check if you are registered through the Texas secretary of state’s “Am I Registered?” website. The voter roll will be continuously updated as the more registrations are added to the state database.