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Tarrant County Elections Administrator Clint Ludwig gives a tour at the Tarrant County Elections Warehouse on Monday, Aug. 31, 2026.<\/p>\n
Amanda McCoy<\/p>\n
FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM<\/p>\n
Voters go to the polls in less than a month to cast their ballots in the weighty midterm elections, and this week the state handed down 74,000 backlogged registration forms for Tarrant County to process before early voting begins on Oct. 19.<\/p>\n
Tarrant County\u2019s elections staff is working around the clock in an effort to amend the voter registration data issue the Texas Secretary of State\u2019s office notified counties of last week. Some applications have been in limbo since October 2025.<\/p>\n
Since Wednesday, about 74,000 individual files have been passed from the Secretary of State\u2019s office to the Tarrant County Elections Administration. Each file does not necessarily represent new voters as some may be updates to existing voter registration records.<\/p>\n
When a Texas resident renews their driver\u2019s license or updates their information on the Department of Public Safety online portal, they have the option to register to vote or update their voter profile as well. A DPS vendor sends that information to the Texas Secretary of State on a daily basis. The Secretary of State then forwards it to the appropriate county for processing.<\/p>\n
\u201cA DPS investigation revealed that a third-party vendor, whose software handles these batch transactions, updated its software in October 2025, causing portions of the records to be cut off,\u201d a DPS spokesperson said. \u201cBecause the records were incomplete, the SOS could not process them.\u201d<\/p>\n
The error was resolved on Sept. 13, but it created a massive backlog of applications that had not been sent to counties until this week.<\/p>\n
\u201cProcessing this volume of data requires a great deal of resources \u2014 people, power and time,\u201d Tarrant County Elections Administrator Clint Ludwig said. \u201cParticularly right now, as we work to keep pace with the high volume of new voter registrations ahead of the Oct. 5 registration deadline for the Nov. 3 Election.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tarrant County has already implemented mandatory overtime in the elections administration and is bringing on temporary staff to minimize interruptions to the department\u2019s work.<\/p>\n
Texas voters have until Oct. 5 to register to vote<\/a>.<\/p>\n
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