{"id":446042,"date":"2026-09-24T08:34:19","date_gmt":"2026-09-24T08:34:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/446042\/"},"modified":"2026-09-24T08:34:19","modified_gmt":"2026-09-24T08:34:19","slug":"texas-dps-neglected-tens-of-thousands-of-voter-applications-democrats-demand-an-investigation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/446042\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas DPS neglected tens of thousands of voter applications; Democrats demand an investigation"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Votebeat & Texas Tribune) – <\/a>Tens of thousands of voter registration applications, some dating back at least a year, are caught in a backlog and have yet to be processed due to an error by the Texas Department of Public Safety, the leader of an association of county election officials said Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Texas Democrats, who are fiercely contesting key offices in closely watched races this year, are calling on Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, to investigate the problem, which was first reported by Votebeat<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Some voter registration applications and updates submitted through DPS\u2019s online driver\u2019s license portal were never sent to county voter registrars, the state told county election officials. <\/p>\n

In an emailed statement Wednesday, DPS said \u201cthe system issue has been resolved\u201d and the agency worked with the secretary of state\u2019s office \u201cto identify incomplete records to backfill incomplete information.\u201d<\/p>\n

DPS did not respond to questions about what caused the issue or the exact scope of the problem. <\/p>\n

The state began delivering the unsent registrations to county officials Tuesday night. <\/p>\n

Chris McGinn, executive director of the Texas Association of County Election Officials, said the organization is still gathering numbers from its members but that he expects large counties to be hit the hardest with additional applications.<\/p>\n

Voter registrars have told the association they\u2019ve received anywhere from a few hundred voter registration applications to process in small counties to tens of thousands of applications and updates in the most populous counties, McGinn said in a statement Wednesday. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe cannot provide specific numbers of these records for specific counties, because by the time I send this e-mail the numbers will have gone up \u2014 and will continue to go up throughout the day today,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

In Collin County, officials are analyzing more than 40,000 additional records they\u2019ve received as of Wednesday. Election workers are trying to identify how many of those could be duplicates of existing records, as well as how many are new voter registration applications versus updates to an existing voter registration, said Kaleb Breaux, the county\u2019s elections administrator.<\/p>\n

That data analysis alone is going to be time-consuming, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have seven full-time voter registration staff and we have brought in 10 temporary workers since Labor Day to help out with applications,\u201d Breaux said. \u201cDepending on what our final numbers are, and how long it takes to process these records, we may have to bring on more.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Travis County, Voter Registrar Celia Israel said in an email that her office received \u201capproximately 32,000 applications from Texas DPS overnight,\u201d bringing their total to 35,000 records to process. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhile I am deeply disappointed in our state partner, the Texas Department of Public Safety, I have the utmost confidence in the Travis County team to carry out our mission for eligible voters,\u201d Israel said.<\/p>\n

The secretary of state\u2019s office became aware of the problem last week, when election officials flagged that they\u2019d noticed a surge in \u201colder\u201d voter registration applications coming from DPS in TEAM, the state\u2019s voter registration system. <\/p>\n

Votebeat previously reported that state officials said the affected transactions produced incomplete voter registration records, which prevented them from being transmitted to county registrars. Officials have not said what information was missing, what caused the records to be incomplete, how many voters were affected, or exactly when the problem began.<\/p>\n

These records go back as far as October 2025, which means counties are now dealing with nearly a year of backlogged voter registration tasks to process. They could include new registrations or simply updates to voters\u2019 existing records, like a change in address.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not clear how many registrations were new versus address updates, or whether the error prevented any voter from casting a ballot in the March primary election. <\/p>\n

The issue has \u201cincreased the administrative burden on officials who have been kind of staying on top of things,\u201d McGinn said during a webinar for reporters Wednesday. Smaller jurisdictions will have to try to work fast with fewer resources, he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s going to be a lot of counties that are paying a lot of overtime,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

State Rep. John Bucy, a Democrat from Austin, and vice chair of the Texas House Elections Committee, on Wednesday called on Abbott to \u201cimmediately commit whatever state resources and funding counties need to process every one of these applications accurately and on time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is absolutely outrageous that, in the run-up to one of the most consequential midterm elections in decades, Texans have had their voter registrations impacted by a failure at the Texas Department of Public Safety,\u201d Bucy said in a statement responding to Votebeat\u2019s initial reporting. <\/p>\n

\u201cCounty election officials are now being asked to clean up the state\u2019s mess at one of the busiest times of the election season. They have to process this backlog on top of the surge in registrations we always see before the deadline, while ensuring older DPS records don\u2019t overwrite more recent voter information.\u201d<\/p>\n

In an email, Abbott\u2019s office referred inquiries to DPS and the secretary of state\u2019s office.<\/p>\n

James Talarico, a Democrat running against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton for U.S. Senate, encouraged Texans to check their voter registration. \u201cTexans follow the rules, register to vote before the deadline, and still risk losing their God-given right to the ballot box because their government failed to do its job,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

State officials said voters who don\u2019t appear on the rolls because of this error can still ask to cast a provisional ballot, and election officials will count it once they confirm the voter had registered via DPS by the appropriate deadline. <\/p>\n

To check the status of your voter registration contact your county election official. You can find a list by county here<\/a>.<\/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

Copyright 2026 KWTX. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Votebeat & Texas Tribune) – Tens of thousands of voter registration applications, some dating back at least a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":446043,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[153864,153866,153867,2135,1967,153868,27,5600,6877,7261,29,153869,28,153865],"class_list":["post-446042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-backlog-of-voter-registration-applications-in-texas","tag-chris-mcginn","tag-executive-director-of-the-texas-association-of-county-election-officials","tag-james-talarico","tag-ken-paxton","tag-state-rep-john-bucy","tag-texas","tag-texas-democrats","tag-texas-department-of-public-safety","tag-texas-gov-greg-abbott","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-house-elections-committee","tag-texas-news","tag-votebeat-investigation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446042","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=446042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446042\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/446043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=446042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=446042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=446042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}