{"id":91274,"date":"2025-12-17T11:24:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-17T11:24:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/91274\/"},"modified":"2025-12-17T11:24:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-17T11:24:08","slug":"texas-secretary-of-state-offices-tech-woes-muddle-candidate-lists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/91274\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas Secretary of State office’s tech woes muddle candidate lists"},"content":{"rendered":"

Weeks after an untimely technology upgrade at the Secretary of State\u2019s office sent counties into a panic over backlogged voter registrations<\/a>, local party leaders and elections officials say the same update has muddled the state\u2019s candidate-tracking portal as well, leaving them with incomplete lists as they start to assemble the March 3 primary ballot.<\/p>\n

Republicans and Democrats run their own primaries in Texas, but lean on the Secretary of State\u2019s office as a centralized source of candidate information.<\/p>\n

Thanks to a series of hangups this year, including a drawn-out legal fight<\/a> over the congressional maps and a new reporting system at the Secretary of State\u2019s office, local party officials say the state\u2019s candidate portal has been experiencing delays, and complete candidate lists still aren\u2019t finalized.<\/p>\n

A Secretary of State spokeswoman said Monday candidates for the primary file with the parties, whose officials enter their information directly to the portal. Between the state and local parties, she said, they should have complete lists to work with for their party primary elections in March.<\/p>\n

County-level candidates file at their county party office, meaning local party chairs have those full records in-house.<\/p>\n

But candidates for multi-county districts or statewide races file with the state parties, which saw a rush of last-minute filings and shuffles between races as the Supreme Court ruled on the congressional districts just days before the deadline.<\/p>\n

On Monday, Bexar County Democratic Party Chair Michelle Lowe Solis and Republican Party of Bexar County Chair Kris Coons met with the Bexar County Elections Department to review a sample ballot based on records from the Secretary of State\u2019s candidate portal.<\/p>\n

But many candidates believed to have filed for office, particularly congressional candidates on the Republican side, were still missing from the list.<\/p>\n

For example, Texas\u2019 newly redrawn 35th Congressional District<\/a>, which stretches southeast from San Antonio to include Guadalupe, Karnes and Wilson counties, added a number of Republican candidates from outside of Bexar County who didn\u2019t show up on the state\u2019s site until this week. <\/p>\n

As did Texas\u2019 21st Congressional District<\/a>, where the race to replace U.S. Rep. Chip Roy (R-Dripping Springs) has grown to include more than a dozen Republicans.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re trying to be understanding about it, because we know it\u2019s a new system,\u201d Coons said of the candidate portal. \u201cWe know [the Secretary of State\u2019s office] is doing the best they can, we get that, but I would like to think that we will have all that information.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Secretary of State\u2019s new candidate portal was part of a larger technology update to their voter registration system, known as TEAM, earlier this year. <\/p>\n

\"\"Elections Administrator Michele Carew and Bexar County Judge Peter Sakai take questions from the media at the Elections Department in October. Credit: Andrea Drusch \/ San Antonio Report<\/p>\n

The move came as a number of Texas counties, including Bexar County, had just lost their private voter registration vendor<\/a>, and were scrambling to transition to the state\u2019s system in time for the Nov. 4 election.<\/p>\n

\u201cTEAM rolled something out that was not ready for primetime,\u201d Lowe Solis said. \u201cThat\u2019s what caused the voter registration backlog prior to the November election, and there\u2019s still issues with TEAM.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bexar County was able to address the backlogged voter registration issues by bringing on temporary staff, and Elections Administrator Michele Carew said Tuesday that she\u2019s been working with the Secretary of State\u2019s office to address ongoing problems with the TEAM system.<\/p>\n

\u201cAre there issues? Yes. They\u2019re working through them and working on communicating with us,\u201d Carew said. \u201cThey use a third-party vendor, so when we speak to the state, they take our concerns to the vendor, and then they rely on the vendor to answer.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unclear whether the county will continue using TEAM for its voter registration in the coming election. It identified VR System as a potential replacement<\/a> earlier this year, but Carew said Tuesday that the move was \u201con hold.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe last I heard probably was about 30 or more days ago, and [the county was] still working with the other vendor, going through their contract,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The search for who is running<\/p>\n

In the days since the filing deadline, candidates, party leaders and groups that organize candidate forums have all been on the hunt for complete candidate lists.<\/p>\n

The Texas Democratic Party<\/a> and Democratic Party of Bexar County<\/a> used Google Docs to make their candidate lists available to the public for the March primary.<\/p>\n

The Republican Party of Bexar County shared its list of local candidates with the San Antonio Report, while the Republican Party of Texas posted its list<\/a> on its website.<\/p>\n

Coons said the Bexar County Republican Party has full records of county-level candidates, but relies on the Secretary of State\u2019s system to track the multi-county and statewide races.<\/p>\n

\"\"GOP Chair Kris Coons pictured at the Republican Party of Bexar County headquarters. Credit: Brenda Baz\u00e1n \/ San Antonio Report<\/p>\n

\u201cWe get everything from the Secretary of State,\u201d Coons said. \u201cThe Republican Party of Texas might have differing views of how things should be done, but I always follow the Secretary of State.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lowe Solis said she\u2019d been conferring with the Texas Democratic Party on a candidate list that she used to hold a ballot order drawing last Friday. As of Monday, she believes all of the candidates are accounted for on official lists.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy initial run-through of the sample ballot is that they have everybody on here,\u201d she said. \u201cI don\u2019t know everybody, we\u2019ve got a lot of people [running], but it seems that the Secretary of State has at least has our Democratic candidates.\u201d<\/p>\n

Third-party and independent candidates don\u2019t appear on the March primary ballot, but file by the same Dec. 9 deadline, and as it stands, aren\u2019t listed publicly on the Secretary of State\u2019s portal. <\/p>\n

Libertarians, for example, choose their nominees at a convention instead of in a primary. But party leaders still upload candidates to the Secretary of State\u2019s portal, which only lists<\/a> Republicans and Democrats on its dropdown menu.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been fighting Secretary of State to open this up to third parties, but it has not been updated yet,\u201d said JR Haseloff, chair at Libertarian Party of\u00a0Bexar County.<\/p>\n

Independent\u00a0candidates file a declaration of intent to run with the Secretary of State and then gather signatures to get on the November ballot after the conclusion of the primaries.<\/p>\n

That means in many cases, the state has the only records for independent candidates who\u2019ve met that first bar, but are also not listed publicly online.<\/p>\n

\u201cRepublicans and Democrats, all they have to do is pony up the money and they\u2019re on the ballot,\u201d said Jason Wolff, who is running as an independent candidate for Bexar County District Attorney. \u201cAn independent has to wait until after the primaries to get 500 signatures from qualified voters who did not vote in either primary \u2026 which leaves me about a month to get all those signatures [to qualify for the November ballot].\u201d<\/p>\n

A spokeswoman for the Secretary of State\u2019s office said that third-party candidates would be added the drop-down after they are nominated at their conventions. The independent candidates will be added once they\u2019ve collected signatures and qualified to the ballot.<\/p>\n

Here\u00a0is the full list<\/a>, as we know it, of Republicans and Democrats who have filed to run in the March primary elections for Bexar County races. A full primary Voter Guide will be available in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Weeks after an untimely technology upgrade at the Secretary of State\u2019s office sent counties into a panic over…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":91275,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[39659,32343,5533,42948,82,84,83,92,3028],"class_list":{"0":"post-91274","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-antonio","8":"tag-kris-coons","9":"tag-march-3-primary","10":"tag-michele-carew","11":"tag-michelle-lowe-solis","12":"tag-san-antonio","13":"tag-san-antonio-headlines","14":"tag-san-antonio-news","15":"tag-top-story","16":"tag-typedaily"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91274","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=91274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91274\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}