{"id":466188,"date":"2026-10-14T22:54:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-14T22:54:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/466188\/"},"modified":"2026-10-14T22:54:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-14T22:54:08","slug":"texas-election-officials-have-processed-hundreds-of-thousands-of-voter-registrations-caught-in-state-error","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/466188\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas election officials have processed hundreds of thousands of voter registrations caught in state error"},"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

Election officials across Texas appear to have cleared a backlog of hundreds of thousands of voter registration applications and updates that went unprocessed for more than a year due to a state software error.<\/p>\n

More than 500,000 voter registration records were caught in what the Texas Department of Public Safety said last month was an error related to a software update for the agency\u2019s online driver\u2019s license portal.<\/p>\n

Roughly a month after state officials acknowledged the issue, The Texas Secretary of State\u2019s Office and the Texas Association of County Election Officials both said on Wednesday that they\u2019re not aware of any county still working through the backlog.<\/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

Kristin Miles, president of the election officials\u2019 association and the Bastrop County election administrator, said the effort shows county election officials will do whatever it takes to ensure that eligible voters can cast ballots.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf that means long nights and working weekends, county election officials are not going to fail the voters of Texas,\u201d Miles said. But, she added, the state \u201cshould be looking at ways to prevent those things from happening again in the future to ensure that county election officials are not burdened by issues that may arise. Because at the end of the day, it was county election officials who put in the work to get the job done.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last month, Votebeat first reported<\/a> on the backlogged voter registration records, which dated back to October 2025. The news came shortly before the state\u2019s Oct. 5 voter registration deadline, which meant election officials had to scramble to get through backlogged records on top of hundreds of voter registration applications arriving daily. <\/p>\n

Voting rights groups have sued the state<\/a>, saying the backlog breached a 2021 settlement agreement that required Texas to provide a reliable way for people to register to vote through DPS\u2019 online driver\u2019s license portal.<\/p>\n

Some better-resourced counties with outside vendors and additional technology, including Dallas, Harris, and Collin counties, were able to get through the backlog within a week. But many election officials said issues with the secretary of state\u2019s voter registration system, known as TEAM, made the backlog harder to resolve<\/a> during a critical time.<\/p>\n

The Texas Secretary of State\u2019s Office said it would offer counties grants to pay for costs related to the backlog, and on Wednesday confirmed it is still offering money to cover overtime and temporary workers.<\/p>\n

\u201cTexas counties have worked diligently and have cleared the backlog. We don\u2019t know of any counties with pending applications,\u201d Alicia Pierce, the spokesperson for the secretary of state\u2019s office said in an email Wednesday. <\/p>\n

Although the backlog related to the DPS records has been cleared, election officials continue to process voter registration applications they\u2019re receiving by mail and in person ahead of the election. Even if they are processed later, registrations that were postmarked or submitted through DPS\u2019 portal ahead of the Oct. 5 registration deadline will be considered valid for the Nov. 3 election.<\/p>\n

Pierce said if a voter registered through the DPS web portal but does not appear on the voter roll, they can cast a provisional ballot and election officials will take additional steps to determine their eligibility so it can be counted. <\/p>\n

\u201cElection officials have an established method with DPS to check the transaction. If that voter did register through DPS, the vote will be counted,\u201d she said.<\/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":466189,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[3803,86975,155,288,49684,27,29,28,216,19681,4516,86976,4277],"class_list":["post-466188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-3803","tag-brenda-nunez","tag-corpus-christi","tag-elections","tag-nueces-county-courthouse","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-tx","tag-votebeat","tag-voter-registration","tag-voter-registration-supervisor","tag-voters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466188","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=466188"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466188\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/466189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=466188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=466188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=466188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}