{"id":152559,"date":"2026-02-05T19:36:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-05T19:36:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/152559\/"},"modified":"2026-02-05T19:36:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-05T19:36:07","slug":"texans-voter-registration-cards-delayed-for-2026-elections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/152559\/","title":{"rendered":"Texans\u2019 voter registration cards delayed for 2026 elections"},"content":{"rendered":"

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas\u2019 free newsletter here.<\/a><\/p>\n

Texas\u2019 unusual mid-decade redistricting and problems with the state\u2019s new voter registration system have delayed the mailing of voter registration certificates, the documents that give voters information about their polling place and their assigned districts, state and local officials say.<\/p>\n

Under state law, the certificates should have been issued by Dec. 6<\/a>, though there\u2019s no penalty for a late mailing. With early voting for the March 3 primaries set to begin Feb. 17, the delay has confused some voters who were expecting to have received the certificates by now, and multiple election officials said they have been fielding calls and questions about the missing certificates for weeks.<\/p>\n

The certificates are small postcards that counties send to registered voters every two years, listing the voter\u2019s local voting precinct, their congressional, state Senate and House districts, county precincts, and city and school districts.<\/p>\n

Voters don\u2019t need the cards to vote, but election officials say the cards can serve as an additional form of ID and help voters identify their new congressional or legislative district if it has changed. They also help election officials conduct voter list maintenance: When a card is returned as undeliverable, it signals that the voter may have moved.<\/p>\n

Redistricting puts added strain on TEAM<\/p>\n

Most of the state\u2019s 254 counties rely on the Secretary of State\u2019s free election and voter registration management system, called TEAM, to produce the certificates. Local election officials have for months complained that they are struggling with the system<\/a>, which was overhauled in July, and several election officials said that is contributing to the delay. <\/p>\n

State election officials said they also didn\u2019t anticipate the system needing to handle the unexpected mid-cycle redistricting lawmakers undertook last year, and the redrawn boundaries are creating additional complications. Alicia Pierce, a spokeswoman for the Texas Secretary of State\u2019s Office, said the state is still working with \u201cseveral counties\u201d to upload redistricting data, including Harris and Tarrant counties, which could not begin the process until they completed special runoff elections Jan. 31. <\/p>\n

The system has lagged in producing reports containing large amounts of data and images that county officials need to print the certificates. Those reports are reviewed by both state and local election administrators to ensure voters\u2019 information, including street addresses, cities, precincts, and districts, is accurate. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis involves a massive upload of data to our system and then a careful review of voter data and validations at the county level to ensure accurate voter lists,\u201d Pierce said. She did not respond to specific questions about election officials\u2019 comments about TEAM. <\/p>\n

Counties that use an outside vendor instead of TEAM to manage their voter rolls, including Collin County in North Texas and Nueces County in South Texas, mailed out the certificates to voters in late January. <\/p>\n

Time is short for updating voter rolls<\/p>\n

In Brazos County, which uses TEAM, election administrator Trudy Hancock counts on having time to update her voter lists after the initial mailing of voter registration cards. She typically gets more than 10,000 of them returned to her office as undeliverable. Brazos is home to College Station and Texas A&M University, and voters there are constantly moving either within the county or elsewhere.<\/p>\n

The returned cards help election officials identify voters who may have moved and can be placed on the suspense list. Those voters have a chance to update their registration at the polls before they can vote. <\/p>\n

But as of Wednesday, Hancock hadn\u2019t been able to mail the certificates to her voters yet. She doubts she\u2019ll have time to process returned certificates in time to flag voters before the March 3 primaries. <\/p>\n

\u201cEven if voter certificates went out this week, we\u2019re not going to get that done in time to update the pollbooks,\u201d Hancock said. <\/p>\n

Tandi Smith, the Kaufman County elections administrator, also has not yet been able to mail out certificates to voters and said she doesn\u2019t know when she\u2019ll be able to. Kaufman has more than 117,000 registered voters. <\/p>\n

\u201cFor us, especially in a growing county with a smaller staff, we\u2019re having to adjust when a system should be functional and meeting our needs,\u201d Smith said. \u201cSo we\u2019re just trying to work through those growing pains until there\u2019s a better way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Natalia is based in Corpus Christi. Contact her at ncontreras@votebeat.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":152560,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[61962,27,29,28,19681,63135],"class_list":{"0":"post-152559","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-texas","8":"tag-card","9":"tag-texas","10":"tag-texas-headlines","11":"tag-texas-news","12":"tag-votebeat","13":"tag-voter-registration-certificate"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152559\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/152560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}