{"id":453719,"date":"2026-10-01T23:42:12","date_gmt":"2026-10-01T23:42:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/453719\/"},"modified":"2026-10-01T23:42:12","modified_gmt":"2026-10-01T23:42:12","slug":"texas-officials-knew-of-issues-with-its-voter-registration-web-portal-in-march-records-show","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/453719\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas officials knew of issues with its voter registration web portal in March, records show"},"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

Six months before the Texas Department of Public Safety and Secretary of State\u2019s Office were forced to send hundreds of thousands of backlogged voter registration records to local county officials, both agencies were warned that records were getting lost in DPS\u2019s web portal.<\/p>\n

A state lawmaker flagged an issue with voter registration records in March, public records show. The agencies said that problem was resolved. But complaints about the portal continued. And in August the agencies realized they had a big issue \u2014 at least 500,000 backlogged<\/a> voter registration records sent to county election officials last week.<\/p>\n

Now, county election administrators are scrambling with little time to sort through those records before the critical Nov. 3 midterm election.<\/p>\n

State officials said the most recent backlog of records was due to an October 2025 software update by a DPS vendor. Software engineering and election administration experts say the state agencies should have tested updates to their respective systems, including how they worked together, and developed ways to immediately alert state officials of errors. <\/p>\n

\u201cTo me, it just looks like they did not have the people with the depth of knowledge and maybe experience to make sure that they were testing everything that they needed to test,\u201d said Trevor Timmons, the former chief information technology officer for the Colorado Secretary of State\u2019s Office. <\/p>\n

The Texas Secretary of State\u2019s Office confirmed it had tested how a new version of its voter registration management system, known as TEAM, worked with DPS\u2019s portal before launching its system overhaul<\/a> in July 2025. The Texas Secretary of State\u2019s Office and DPS did not respond to questions about whether they had again tested the systems before the October 2025 DPS update. <\/p>\n

DPS acknowledged in March that a \u201cprogramming change\u201d had prevented the processing of nearly 1,000 voter registration applications and updates Texans submitted through its web portal between December and February, public records show<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The agency assured state Sen. Donna Campbell\u2019s office, which was seeking information on behalf of a constituent, that the error had been resolved, according to a March email. State information technology officials \u201care monitoring online activity for any unforeseen anomalies. Should they encounter irregularities, they will be notifying the Department immediately,\u201d a DPS official wrote in the email obtained by the Texas Civil Rights Project, a nonprofit that advocates for voting rights, and shared with Votebeat.<\/p>\n

By Texans, for Texans.<\/p>\n

Stay in the know on elections across the state with on-the-ground reporting by Natalia Contreras. Get her newsletter, delivered twice a month.<\/p>\n

DPS officials told Campbell\u2019s office that a programming change made by the Department of Information Resources (DIR), which administers the web portal, and its vendor, Deloitte, caused the issue. The voter registration selections made during online driver\u2019s license and state ID transactions could \u201cnot be saved or transmitted to the Department,\u201d DPS said.<\/p>\n

Voters who checked the option \u201cyes\u201d to register to vote received a receipt reflecting their selection. But the transaction didn\u2019t go through due to the programming error, DPS said. As a result, voters\u2019 applications and address updates weren\u2019t actually submitted and their records were never sent to the secretary of state. DPS officials said DIR and its vendor were not able to identify the impacted records, so voter registration records were corrected \u201conly when a customer provides a copy of their transaction receipt,\u201d the emails say. <\/p>\n

Warnings about the system\u2019s flaws continued. In July, voting rights advocates wrote to both DPS and the Texas Secretary of State\u2019s Office citing similar problems with the web portal. <\/p>\n

\u201cAs a result, Texas voters showed up to the polls during recent elections believing they had successfully updated their voter registration on DPS\u2019s website, only to discover their registration was not updated,\u201d the Texas Civil Rights Project wrote in the letter shared with Votebeat.<\/p>\n

Both agencies responded. DPS told the group that technical issues are promptly resolved. The secretary of state\u2019s office said it receives files of voter registration records daily from DPS and sends them to local election officials, and that it was following state and federal laws.<\/p>\n

Despite the assurances, problems with voter registration applications submitted through the portal have continued to surface. <\/p>\n

The Texas Secretary of State\u2019s Office did not respond to specific questions for this story. In an emailed statement Thursday, spokesperson Alicia Pierce said the office is \u201claser-focused on helping counties process these registrations and ensuring all eligible Texans can exercise their right to vote. We will continue to review our processes and procedures to identify areas of improvement and ways to prevent similar issues in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a September call with county election officials, Christina Adkins, the secretary of state\u2019s elections division director, described \u201ca little frustration\u201d because, she said, her office had \u201cmade inquiries, expressed concerns\u201d to DPS related to complaints about the portal and \u201chad been assured that there were no problems.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo when DPS presented this information to us, it was quite the surprise,\u201d she said, according to a recording of the call obtained by Votebeat. <\/p>\n

In an emailed statement Wednesday, DPS said the error that led to the backlog announced last week had been resolved and the agency \u201chas not identified any further issues with the transfer of its daily batch reports of voter information.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAdditional controls are now in place between DPS and the SOS to confirm that complete information has been sent and received, so this cannot be replicated in the future,\u201d the DPS statement said. <\/p>\n

The agency did not respond to questions about specific steps taken after the incidents to prevent them from continuing. <\/p>\n

Election officials must now process the delayed records and add voters to the rolls just weeks before the midterm election, in a year when some high-profile statewide races could be close. If voters show up at the polls and aren\u2019t listed as registered, they\u2019ll be asked to vote using provisional ballots, which will require extra steps to confirm their eligibility before those ballots can be counted. <\/p>\n

Some better-resourced counties, including Dallas, have already been able to get through their backlogs; Dallas had nearly 70,000 records. Others are working long hours to do so. <\/p>\n

The news of the backlog sparked bipartisan calls from state lawmakers for an investigation into what went wrong. At least one key GOP legislator said the secretary of state\u2019s office should have caught the problem sooner<\/a>. Timmons, the former Colorado official who is now vice president of Ready for Tuesday, an organization that provides operational support for election officials, agrees.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey both should have been staying in touch about system upgrades to make sure everything is still flowing along normally, and just making sure that you had the right people talking to each other,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

\u2018Technical incompetence\u2019<\/p>\n

Voting rights advocates with the Texas Civil Rights Project, the nonprofit group that wrote to DPS and the secretary of state in July, are skeptical the problems are fixed. <\/p>\n

Although the magnitude of the most recent problem is unlike what officials and advocates have seen before, election officials, voters, and the Texas Secretary of State\u2019s Office have long said<\/a> that voters\u2019 attempts to register via DPS \u2014 in person and through its web portal \u2014 don\u2019t always work. That has led to some voters having to cast provisional ballots in past elections, as Votebeat previously reported<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Karla Maradiaga, a voting rights attorney with the Texas Civil Rights Project, said the years-long problems signal a lack of oversight. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey say they have checks in place,\u201d Maradiaga said. \u201cEither that\u2019s not true or whatever checks they have in place are not working.\u201d<\/p>\n

William Furney, 29, a voter from North Texas, believes he may have been one of the voters whose registration was never sent to county officials. <\/p>\n

In October 2025, after he moved from Collin to Dallas County, he used DPS\u2019s web portal.<\/p>\n

\u201cI checked the option to register to vote. I thought everything was good, I got the receipt, I got the driver\u2019s license in the mail, I thought everything had transferred over fine,\u201d Furney said. <\/p>\n

But on Election Day for the March primary he found out it hadn\u2019t worked. He was told he wasn\u2019t on the list of registered voters and offered a provisional ballot. <\/p>\n

Furney told the poll worker he\u2019d updated his address and had registered through the DPS web portal, \u201cand the immediate response I got from him was something like, \u2018oh I can\u2019t believe this is happening again,\u2019 like he had seen this happening before,\u201d Furney said. <\/p>\n

Furney said he spent about an hour at the polling site to cast his provisional ballot. Weeks later, he got a notice from the county saying his ballot was not accepted, he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt was so frustrating to have to go through all that process just to be told my vote wouldn\u2019t count because I wasn\u2019t registered,\u201d Furney said. \u201cIt just kind of illustrates the technical incompetence of Texas state government. If DPS isn\u2019t capable of delivering these registration changes in time, like, why even offer the service?\u201d<\/p>\n

Lawmakers promise investigations into the problem<\/p>\n

Two key GOP lawmakers have promised investigations into what went wrong. State Rep. Matt Shaheen, the chair of the Texas House Elections Committee, previously told Votebeat he has spoken directly with DPS officials and is \u201cgoing to personally make sure whoever is responsible for the mistake is held accountable.\u201d <\/p>\n

Still, Shaheen, a Republican from North Texas who has a background in technology and software management, said questions about whether the agencies adequately tested how the systems work together are \u201cspeculation.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of different things can happen when you\u2019re working with these systems,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

But state Sen. Paul Bettencourt, a Republican from Houston, said this is a \u201ctwo-agency snafu that could have easily been resolved with some better programming.\u201d He previously said the Texas Secretary of State\u2019s Office should have flagged the problem sooner. \u201cIf something stops happening, you either have to ring the alarm bell, or you have to have somebody looking at the data that realizes that something\u2019s wrong,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

The public records show there were multiple complaints about the DPS portal.<\/p>\n

A staff member for Campbell\u2019s office first reached out to DPS officials on March 9 about a constituent who had tried to update her address via the state agency\u2019s web portal. The change had not been made. \u201cPlease advise if anyone can figure out what happened,\u201d Campbell\u2019s office wrote.<\/p>\n

DPS officials responded the next day. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe Department recently became aware of an issue affecting voter registration information collected through the online driver\u2019s license feature,\u201d the email response says. \u201cThe issue impacted transactions completed between December 6, 2025 and February 26, 2026.\u201d<\/p>\n

The agency said it immediately alerted the secretary of state\u2019s office to the problem and the programming error was resolved. <\/p>\n

In an email on March 12, in summarizing transactions made using the web portal during the March Primary election, DPS officials said 992 transactions were conducted during the period affected by the programming issue. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe also responded to 53 election officials to provide an online receipt because the voter claimed they had selected \u201cyes\u201d during the DIR programming issue,\u201d a DPS official wrote. \u201cAnd four records were changed to \u201cyes\u201d because we received their online receipt.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then, in July, the Texas Civil Rights Project and the League of Women Voters wrote to DPS and the secretary of state\u2019s office to say that the portal appeared to be failing. The organizations said they received complaints from at least three voters who selected the voter registration option on DPS\u2019s web portal but later found that their registration had never been updated. <\/p>\n

The groups argued that the problems could violate a 2021 legal settlement that directed the state agencies to maintain a system that allows voters to register online while updating their driver\u2019s license or state ID, and could be in violation of federal law. <\/p>\n

\u201cAs with any complex data-transfer system, occasional technical issues may arise,\u201d D. Phillip Adkins, DPS\u2019s general counsel, responded on Aug. 6, according to the records<\/a>. \u201cWhen they do, the Department works promptly to identify and resolve them in close coordination with the secretary of state.\u201d<\/p>\n

The secretary of state\u2019s general counsel, Adam Bitter, responded too<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\u201cYour reliance on three purported instances across the State \u2014 out of more than 18 million registrants \u2014 is sorely misguided,\u201d he wrote. \u201cIndeed, nothing in your letter establishes\u2014or even suggests \u2014 that the Secretary of State or DPS has failed to comply\u201d with the settlement or federal or state law, he wrote, adding, \u201cshould you choose to proceed with litigation on this matter, we stand ready to vigorously contest your allegations.\u201d<\/p>\n

State officials say they worked quickly to resolve the problem<\/p>\n

Both agencies have said that an October 2025 software update to the DPS portal by vendor Deloitte, caused the current massive backlog. <\/p>\n

DPS in its statement Wednesday said the update \u201ccaused three pieces of data to be omitted from the daily file\u201d sent to the secretary of state that has information from online driver\u2019s license and state ID transactions. <\/p>\n

DPS said that in late August, \u201cthe department identified the missing data fields issue\u201d and immediately worked with the secretary of state\u2019s office and their third-party vendor, Civix, to resolve it. <\/p>\n

The issue was resolved as of Sept. 13, DPS said. <\/p>\n

On Sept. 23, Adkins, the secretary of state\u2019s elections division director, acknowledged in the call with county officials that voters and county officials had reported problems with DPS voter registration applications to her agency. She said her office had asked DPS about them. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe noticed that we were missing some daily files from DPS,\u201d Adkins said. \u201cThis is something that happens and has happened from time to time over the years, where we don\u2019t get a file posted for our system to pull down and automatically process.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said the office reached out to DPS to investigate. About a week later, DPS said that \u201cthere were some bigger issues that were going on that they needed to alert us to,\u201d Adkins said.<\/p>\n

Adkins said that because the records were missing key data points, the automated process didn\u2019t match records and push the data to counties as it typically did. Adkins told county officials she and her staff did not know at first exactly how many records they\u2019d be receiving. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe had some kind of broad ideas from what they were telling us, but we\u2019re not given any kind of specific numbers,\u201d Adkins said. \u201cSo when we got the records on the 14th, they were pretty large files, pretty substantial records, and we knew there was going to be quite a bit of data there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Adkins added that DPS requested that both agencies work together \u201cover the next couple of weeks to do some manual verifications on a daily basis. They want to ensure that the modifications that they have made to their system to address this issue are in place and working as they should be, and not impacting files going forward,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

Adkins told county officials that her office would be conducting \u201cadditional manual verifications going forward, especially through this very critical early voter registration timeframe leading up to the November election.\u201d <\/p>\n

She said her staff is now having \u201csome bigger discussions about other safeguards\u201d to prevent such problems. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think our obligation right now is really to our voters, to make sure that these voters are not impacted and that they can vote a regular ballot in November, as they should be able to,\u201d Adkins told county election officials. <\/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":453720,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[155901,27,29,28,3602,19681],"class_list":["post-453719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-semmes-branch-library-polling-location-on-primary-election-day-in-san-antonio","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-texas-tribune","tag-votebeat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453719","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=453719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453719\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/453720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=453719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=453719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=453719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}