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Norma LaHood, center left, and Gloria Paxson, center right, hold campaign signs as they greet voters entering the Brook Hollow Branch Library on the first day of early voting for the March 3, 2026 primary election in San Antonio.<\/p>\n
Sam Owens\/San Antonio Express-News<\/p>\n
Voters enter Brook Hollow Branch Library in San Antonio to cast their ballots on the first day of early voting for the March 3, 2026 primary election.<\/p>\n
Sam Owens\/San Antonio Express-News<\/p>\n
During early voting for the March 2026 Democratic primary, Sybil Morgan walked to her polling place at Cody Library to ask a simple question: Had the\u00a0Bexar County Elections Department received her mail-in ballot?\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Morgan, 82, had used only one stamp and was worried that wasn\u2019t enough postage. The election judge offered to call the elections department to find out\u00a0\u2014 it was a slow morning at the North Side site, and Morgan was the only voter there.<\/p>\n
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She sat on a couch a few feet away from the judge, so she could hear the conversation getting off to a rocky start.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe judge said, \u2018I\u2019m not asking if you got her application. She\u2019s received her ballot and returned it to you. We\u2019re trying to find out if you have her ballot,\u2019\u201d Morgan recalled.<\/p>\n
But after several more minutes of back-and-forth, the judge told her: \u201c\u2018Oh, good\u00a0\u2014 they found your ballot.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet when\u00a0Morgan\u00a0\u2014 who is also a\u00a0Bexar County Democratic Party precinct chair\u00a0\u2014 later received a list from the local party of people in her precinct who\u2019d voted in the primary, her name wasn\u2019t on it. Neither was her husband\u2019s. He\u2019d also voted by mail.<\/p>\n
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She called the Elections Department to ask again about her ballot. An employee told her the office didn\u2019t have her ballot, contradicting what she heard from the election judge during early voting.<\/p>\n
She said she has repeatedly asked the Elections Department what happened but hasn\u2019t gotten an explanation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Kathy Vale, who served as an election clerk at the Tobin Library polling site during the March primary election, said \u201ccountless\u201d voters showed up to vote in person because of problems with their mail ballots. Some voters told her about missing mail ballots. Others said they had requested a ballot for the Republican primary but received a Democratic one, and vice versa. Others received no ballot at all.<\/p>\n
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Two polling-site officials and five voters\u00a0told the San Antonio Express-News about missing mail ballots in three elections: the November 2025 election, which featured state constitutional amendments and a proposed\u00a0Bexar County tax to pay for a portion of a new Spurs arena, the party primaries in March and the Democratic and Republican runoff elections in May.<\/p>\n
Chris Welde, co-chair of the Bexar County Democratic Party\u2019s Election Integrity and Voter Protection Committee, said she began hearing an increasing number of reports of mail-ballot problems during the March primary.<\/p>\n
\u201cI almost can\u2019t go into a public meeting without someone telling me their story or a neighbor\u2019s story about a problem with the mail ballots,\u201d Welde added.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But there\u2019s no official tally of mail-in ballot problems. The Elections Department does not formally track them, leaving officials and the public without a way to determine how widespread those problems have been.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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In response to an open records request, the department said it does not maintain a centralized log or database of complaints. It also said it keeps no other types of records of \u201ccomplaints or inquiries\u201d from voters.<\/p>\n
Vale, who is also a member of\u00a0Bexar County\u2019s Elections and Voter Engagement Advisory Committee and Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones’ Commission on Voting, is one of several people who say they\u2019ve struggled to get clear information from the county Elections Department.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Express-News reached out to\u00a0Bexar County Republican Party chairwoman Kris Coons about whether she knew of any problems with mail-in ballots in last November\u2019s election or the GOP\u2019s primary election or runoff this year. But she didn\u2019t respond to several requests for comment. \u00a0<\/p>\n
The problems come as mail ballots receive renewed national scrutiny ahead of the Nov. 3 election, early voting for which starts Oct. 19 in.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Last month, President Donald Trump\u00a0\u2014 who has described voting-by-mail as \u201ccheating,\u201d<\/a> although he personally votes by mail\u00a0\u2014 sought to impose stricter mail ballot requirements that would\u2019ve allowed the U.S. Postal Service to reject ballots that did not meet the new standards.<\/p>\n On Sept. 14, the Supreme Court rejected the administration\u2019s request to allow the rules to take effect for the November election.<\/p>\n But that national debate is separate from the concerns in Bexar County, where voters have struggled to determine whether the Elections Departments received\u00a0their mail ballots and whether they were counted.<\/p>\n Lost in the mail?<\/p>\n Madeleine Dewar, an 85-year-old voter who lives in Beacon Hill, said she has been voting by mail\u00a0without problems\u00a0since she turned 65. At the beginning of each year, she marks the mail-in ballot application deadlines on her calendar.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n For the November 2025 election, she followed her usual routine.<\/p>\n \u201cThe ballot went back in the mail within a day or two. It never goes out late,\u201d\u00a0Dewar said.<\/p>\n Months later, after she\u2019d already mailed her ballot for the March primary, Dewar began hearing from friends who had not received their ballots in\u00a0 the mail. It prompted her to check on the status of her ballots with the Elections Department. She was told it had received neither her March primary ballot nor the ballot she had cast in the November election.<\/p>\n Dewar ultimately voted provisionally in the March primary, but she had already lost the opportunity to do so in the November election.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Provisional ballots are used when a voter\u2019s eligibility cannot be immediately verified on election day. Officials review the ballots after election day to decide whether they should count.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe only thing I could get from the Elections Department was that both ballots were lost in the mail, but I don\u2019t believe that would\u2019ve happened twice,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n For other voters, the Elections Department\u2019s online tools offered little clarity about whether the office had received their ballots.<\/p>\n For the past three elections, Lausanne\u00a0Wiatrowski, a 73-year-old Lincoln Heights resident, said she could not get the \u201ctrack my ballot\u201d feature on the\u00a0Bexar County Elections website to work. The Elections Department told her the data had not been updated because of glitches with the voter system platform.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Wiatrowski said Elections Administrator Michele\u00a0Carew, who\u2019s overseen elections in Bexar County since March 2025, eventually informed her that the department had received two of her ballots. She said the department could provide no information about the third one.<\/p>\n Problems hard to identify<\/p>\n There is \u201cvery rarely one singular cause or issue\u201d behind voter complaints involving mail ballots, said Matt Lamb, an elections researcher and political science professor at Texas Tech University.<\/p>\n Compared with voting in person, more can go wrong with mail ballots because voters fill out and send off their ballots without election workers present to answer questions or catch mistakes, he said.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n But he said documenting mail ballot problems and their causes is essential\u00a0\u2014 not only to know where the process can be improved but also to maintain voter confidence.<\/p>\n \u201cConspiracy theories love a knowledge vacuum,\u201d he said. \u201cA voter is less likely to participate in the process again if their thinking is: \u2018What\u2019s the point if things are just going to be screwed up or elections processes can\u2019t be trusted? \u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Carew declined an interview request for this story.<\/p>\n However, in public meetings and other interviews, she has attributed problems with tracking and locating mail ballots to the state\u2019s Texas Election Administration Management system, known as TEAM, which the county has been using since September 2025.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n TEAM stores and manages data that includes voters\u2019 addresses, voting history, registration applications, images of their signatures for verification, and images of their mail-ballot envelopes.<\/p>\n The county switched to TEAM<\/a> after Votec, a contractor that managed the county\u2019s voter rolls,\u00a0went out of business<\/a> in summer 2025. Bexar County is one of several large counties in Texas that was forced to quickly pivot to TEAM.<\/p>\n The transition was rocky. The county went three months without any software to process voter registrations, so it accumulated a backlog<\/a> of more than 70,000 voters to register in the weeks before last November\u2019s election.<\/p>\n In an interview with the San Antonio Report, Carew said the system does not always show the current status of mail ballots, creating discrepancies in records and confusion among voters trying to track their ballots.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cEven though we show that we received an application, we mailed them a ballot, the ballot came back and the ballot was counted, it\u2019s not reflected in TEAM,\u201d Carew said.<\/p>\n Under the county\u2019s previous voter registration system, registrations submitted through the Department of Public Safety\u2019s online driver\u2019s license portal were processed automatically. Carew said TEAM eliminated that feature, requiring elections staff to manually process roughly 1,000 voter registrations each day from Bexar County residents renewing, replacing or updating their driver\u2019s licenses.<\/p>\n That challenge has become more acute. Last month,\u00a0Bexar County unexpectedly received about 45,000 unprocessed voter registrations from DPS.<\/p>\n The law enforcement agency said a problem with its online driver\u2019s license portal had prevented tens of thousands of voter registrations from reaching county election offices across Texas. While it said the problem has been resolved, the agency has not publicly disclosed what the glitch was or what caused it.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Bexar County approved a contract<\/a> with a new vendor, VR Systems, in February to replace TEAM, and Carew initially hoped to have it running by March.<\/a> But delays caused by\u00a0a contract impasse<\/a> and dispute with former Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson<\/a> have pushed that roll-out to January.<\/p>\n \u201cThey are aware these problems still exist,\u201d Carew said in commissioners court of the TEAM contractor hired by the secretary of state\u2019s office. \u201cThe mail ballot problems are not for a lack of us putting in the history of the people voting by mail, it\u2019s for a lack of a great voter registration system.\u201d<\/p>\n TEAM trouble<\/p>\n Former Elections Department employees and voter registration\u00a0advocates interviewed by the Express-News acknowledged limitations of the TEAM system and problems it has caused for both voters and staff. But some say the problems aren\u2019t limited to TEAM.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cThe Elections Department is attributing all of the issues we\u2019re having locally to issues out of their control, \u201d Welde said. \u201cThere\u2019s no doubt TEAM can\u2019t handle a county of our size, but the more I\u2019ve learned about the department\u2019s processes and people\u2019s individual cases, the more I realize it\u2019s not the only problem.\u201d<\/p>\n Some point to another major change that came after Carew was hired in 2025\u00a0\u2014 the Elections Department began outsourcing mail-ballot printing and mailing to Arizona-based Runbeck Election Services.\u00a0<\/p>\n County records show Bexar County paid $79,000<\/a> to Runbeck for printing services during the March primary and $32,000 for the November 2025 election.<\/p>\n Vale and Welde both said they began hearing more reports of problems after the department began using the new vendor. However, without records documenting mail ballot complaints and their causes, it\u2019s impossible to determine whether Runbeck played a role in the problems reported by voters to the Express News.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Carew told the Bexar County Election Commission on June 30 that more than 98% of mail ballots for the November 2025 election were delivered to voters. But\u00a0Welde said the department has not provided a formal report or additional information showing how that percentage was calculated.<\/p>\n \u201c\u2018Being delivered\u2019 and being delivered to the intended recipient are two different things,\u201d she added.\u00a0<\/p>\n Runbeck did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n The company has also faced scrutiny for its election work in other parts of the state.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n In 2021, Tarrant County cancelled its contract<\/a> with Runbeck after a third of returned mail ballots were rejected by scanning machines because of illegible barcodes. Runbeck had printed the ballots and said at the time it was investigating the cause of the problem.<\/p>\n Spike in provisional ballots<\/p>\n Texas law requires voters who request a mail ballot but decide ultimately to vote in person to surrender their mail ballots at their polling place. If they don\u2019t bring their mail ballot, they must cast a provisional ballot.\u00a0<\/p>\n Vale said \u201c99 out of 100\u201d voters who came to Tobin Library during this year\u2019s primary wanting to vote in person after requesting a mail ballot didn\u2019t know they needed to bring their mail ballot.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cI had one person run home to get it and come back, but that\u2019s a very rare occurrence,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n In March 2026, 1,054 voters in both party primaries cast provisional ballots<\/a>, about 22% of which were rejected, according to departmental data.\u00a0By comparison, voters\u00a0cast 248 provisional ballots<\/a> in the November 2025 election, and more than half were rejected.<\/p>\n Some fluctuation in provisional voting is standard, but a four-fold increase in one election to the next \u201cwarrants attention from the county,\u201d said Lamb, the Texas Tech professor.<\/p>\n \u201cI would think that Bexar County should examine whether something systematic is causing an increase like that,\u201d Lamb added. \u201cIt may turn out that it was a one-time odd occurrence out of the county\u2019s control, but it warrants investigating.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Mail ballot problems weren\u2019t the only reason voters cast provisional ballots.\u00a0Carew has said that voter registration problems, including issues involving registrations submitted through the DPS online driver\u2019s license portal, also led some voters to vote provisionally.<\/p>\n Several voting locations\u00a0\u2014 including Tobin Library, Cody Library and Mission Library\u00a0\u2014 ran out of provisional ballots during early voting in March 2026, Vale said.\u00a0<\/p>\n When Tobin Library ran out of provisional ballots on two separate days, poll workers called the Elections Department to request additional ones. It took two hours for the department to deliver the extra ballots on one of those days.<\/p>\n \u201cDuring that window, any time there was a situation that required a provisional ballot, that voter was told, \u2018I\u2019m sorry, but you\u2019re going to have to return later,\u2019\u201d Vale said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n The process for submitting a provisional ballot is also time-consuming. The election judge is pulled off the floor to walk the voter through the detailed, step-by-step process for filling out a provisional ballot. The judge also has to sign and seal the ballot before they can return to the floor.<\/p>\n