never transmitted to the county,<\/a>\u00a0a spokesperson confirmed.\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cdn-channels-pixel.ex.co\/events\/0012000001fxZm9AAE?integrationType=DEFAULT&template=design%2Farticle%2Fplatypus_two_column.tpl\")
<\/p>\n
In Collin County, officials received more than 40,000 backlogged files this week, said Elections Administrator Kaleb Breaux.<\/p>\n
While the technical debacle originating at the Texas Department of Public Safety is landing on the shoulders of counties across the state before the midterms, local officials say they plan to rectify the problem before the first day of early voting Oct. 19.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\u201cDallas County Elections is committed to ensuring every eligible voter registration record is processed accurately and timely,\u201d spokesperson Nic Solorzano said.<\/p>\n
Officials from DPS and the Texas Secretary of State\u2019s office have yet to explain exactly how the errors occurred for nearly a year without detection.<\/p>\n
In a statement to The Dallas Morning News, a DPS spokesperson said \u201cincomplete information in some records\u201d prevented the department from \u201cfully transmitting\u201d the files to the secretary of state for processing.\u00a0<\/p>\n
State elections director Christina Adkins told county officials in a Sept. 16 email that a vendor \u201crecently\u201d alerted the secretary of state to the issue regarding DPS files and that counties were reporting older DPS registrations appearing in their systems. Adkins wrote in another email on Tuesday the issue prevented voter registration information from being sent to counties for review.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The problem was first reported publicly on Tuesday by\u00a0Votebeat Texas.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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If applications submitted through DPS are marked with a transaction date before the voter registration deadline of Oct. 5, they will be valid for the Nov. 3 election, secretary of state spokesperson Alicia Pierce told The News in an email.<\/p>\n
In jurisdictions like Dallas and Collin counties, which store voter registrations separately from Texas\u2019 statewide system, officials must identify any voters who registered through the elections offices after their failed attempts through DPS.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Solorzano said the department will not need to pay staff overtime to sort through the files.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In Collin County, Breaux said his office will make \u201cwhatever time necessary to review\u201d the more than 40,000 records transmitted to his office this week.<\/p>\n
Voters who registered through DPS\u2019s online portal but do not appear on the rolls may cast a provisional ballot.<\/p>\n
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\u201cOur office reviews every provisional ballot cast to ensure that the correct determination is made to count each ballot, if it is eligible to be counted,\u201d\u00a0Breaux said.<\/p>\n
Breaux said updated records for eligible voters can be pushed through the check-in pollbooks even after the voting period has begun.<\/p>\n
Voters may check their registration status online in both Dallas and Collin counties.<\/p>\n
Jon Abel of Richardson learned this week his son was one of tens of thousands of voters across Texas whose attempts to register to vote through Texas DPS\u2019s online portal failed.<\/p>\n
In July, a month before Daniel Abel turned 18, he tried to prepare by renewing his drivers license online and checking a box to also register to vote.<\/p>\n
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His driver\u2019s license arrived in the mail within a month, but his voter registration never showed up on Dallas County\u2019s verification website, according to his father.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When Jon Abel called Dallas County\u2019s elections office Aug. 28 to check on his son\u2019s status, he said the representative couldn\u2019t find a pending application.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe woman there was very helpful but said this happens all the time and to just send in a separate registration,\u201d Abel said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Solorzano did not respond to a question about instances of his office noticing this issue before this week.<\/p>\n
Jon Abel said his son\u2019s registration application went through after they mailed it in to the elections office. He is registered to vote in time for the midterms and the start of his freshman year at Concordia University Texas in Austin.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Others may still be waiting.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m glad it has finally come to light that the problem has been found,\u201d Jon Abel said. \u201cHopefully it\u2019s going to be fixed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Staff writer William Tong contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Voting machines, Thursday, Oct. 6, 2022 at Dallas County Election Center in Dallas. Rebecca Slezak\/Staff Photographer Less than…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":446675,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28,89512,88338,89138],"class_list":["post-446674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-tp-texas","tag-tp-collin-county","tag-tp-dallas-county"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446674","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=446674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446674\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/446675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=446674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=446674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=446674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}