{"id":348329,"date":"2026-06-24T10:42:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-24T10:42:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/348329\/"},"modified":"2026-06-24T10:42:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-24T10:42:08","slug":"texas-lawmakers-want-fixes-to-statewide-voter-registration-system-ahead-of-midterms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/348329\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas lawmakers want fixes to statewide voter registration system ahead of midterms"},"content":{"rendered":"

This coverage is made possible through Votebeat<\/a>, a nonpartisan news organization covering local election administration and voting access. Sign up for Votebeat Texas\u2019 free newsletters here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Texas lawmakers on Tuesday asked the Texas Secretary of State\u2019s Office for assurances that issues with the state\u2019s voter registration and election management system would be fixed before the November midterm election. <\/p>\n

\u201cThose fixes have to be done, because if we go into a November election and we don\u2019t, we can\u2019t claim that we have integrity in the voter roll,\u201d said state Sen. Paul Bettencourt<\/a>, a Republican from Harris County, during a Senate State Affairs Committee hearing that addressed voter registration and voter list maintenance issues.<\/p>\n

Bettencourt said he\u2019s heard complaints about the system, known as TEAM, from election officials in Travis, Austin, and Jackson counties, among others. <\/p>\n

Christina Adkins, the elections division director at the secretary of state\u2019s office, said the agency is \u201cdedicating every possible resource that we have within our office to resolving these issues.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is nothing more important in our office than this project,\u201d Adkins said. <\/p>\n

TEAM was redesigned and redeveloped by the state and relaunched last summer. Election officials say they have struggled with it<\/a> since then, and though some functionality issues have been resolved, others continue to come up. <\/p>\n

For example, election officials have reported that processes such as voter registration status lookups and precinct assignments frequently don\u2019t work properly. In addition, the system often malfunctions when attempting to produce reports of registered voters and voters who have requested a mail ballot, forcing some election officials to produce their own spreadsheets to keep track. <\/p>\n

The problems, election officials say, have added financial and staffing strains on counties already strapped for resources. <\/p>\n

The system was developed by Civix, a Louisiana-based vendor. The majority of the state\u2019s 254 counties rely on TEAM to plan elections and maintain their voter rolls. Even counties that instead use software from a state-approved private vendor to manage their voter rolls are required by state law to sync their data with TEAM daily, and are required to use TEAM to verify a voter\u2019s identity and their eligibility to cast a ballot.<\/p>\n

Groups representing election officials across Texas have asked the agency to halt the TEAM update rollout and address issues that they said \u201cdirectly impact key parts of the election and jury process.\u201d The groups first outlined their complaints in a letter<\/a> to Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson in October, and sent another one in February. <\/p>\n

Earlier this month, Nelson announced she\u2019d be stepping down as of July 17. Gov. Greg Abbott<\/a> has yet to appoint her successor.<\/p>\n

Secretary of state, vendor working together on fixes<\/p>\n

According to public records, the state\u2019s contract with Civix is for $17 million. The secretary of state\u2019s office told Votebeat last year that the money for it came from a mix of state dollars and federal funds allocated under the 2002 Help America Vote Act, earmarked for improving election administration.<\/p>\n

Bettencourt raised questions about Civix\u2019s work during the hearing. \u201cWhen I get half a dozen counties with their hair on fire, and some counties are small, and some of them are big, that means that the vendor is behind on actually delivering fixes to the system,\u201d Bettencourt said. <\/p>\n

He directly asked Adkins whether Civix was up for the task. \u201cYes, sir,\u201d she responded, adding her office is working with the vendor on fixes. Civix did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

Civix, Adkins said, also manages voter registration systems for other states, including Louisiana and Iowa, but Texas is the vendor\u2019s biggest election management and voter registration software customer. <\/p>\n

The Texas Secretary of State\u2019s Office has said it anticipated technical issues with this \u201conce-in-a-decade upgrade,\u201d though it pointed to some unexpected challenges that have exacerbated the issues. <\/p>\n

The agency specified that it didn\u2019t anticipate the updated system having to handle significant amounts of data from large counties that abruptly stopped using a vendor that <\/a>had financial problems. It also noted that redrawn boundaries following last year\u2019s unexpected midcycle redistricting created additional complications that prevented counties from mailing out voter registration certificates<\/a> on time.\n<\/p>\n

Disclosure: Texas Secretary of State has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune\u2019s journalism. Find a complete\u00a0list of them here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Natalia Contreras is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. She is based in Corpus Christi. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This coverage is made possible through Votebeat, a nonpartisan news organization covering local election administration and voting access.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":348330,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[132,155,392,405,120572,9538,5142,287,1564,27,29,293,28,394,6588],"class_list":["post-348329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-austin","tag-corpus-christi","tag-greg-abbott","tag-harris-county","tag-jackson-county","tag-jane-nelson","tag-paul-bettencourt","tag-politics","tag-state-government","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-legislature","tag-texas-news","tag-travis-county","tag-well-c-homepage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348329","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=348329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348329\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/348330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=348329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=348329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=348329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}