State Error Caught 15,000 Texas Voter Records Days Before Early Voting

A second state software error held up about 15,000 Texas voter registration records, and county election offices received them Thursday, four days before early voting opens Monday. Alicia Pierce, spokesperson for the Texas Secretary of State’s Office, gave the figure to Votebeat and The Texas Tribune and said not all counties were affected.

The error hit address updates that Texans submitted through the state’s online name and address change service on Texas.gov between September 1 and sometime last week. County officials now have to sort out which of those records came in before the October 5 registration deadline and get them onto the list of registered voters before polls open.

Where the records went

The Texas Association of County Election Officials said Bexar County received 3,000 records Thursday, Travis County 1,100, Williamson County 700 and Hays County 400. On Friday the association had estimated more than 5,200 records across those four counties. The state’s 15,000 figure covers every affected county.

Some counties reported that the records were missing necessary address information, according to Chris McGinn, the association’s executive director.

What the state said went wrong

In a Thursday email to county election officials obtained by Votebeat, state elections director Christina Adkins called the problem “an extra address validation with Texas.gov.” She wrote that Civix, the Louisiana-based vendor that runs the state’s TEAM voter registration system, “has rerun all files from September 1 through the present to identify any affected voters,” and that “many counties will not see any increase to their Texas Online registrations at this time.”

The Texas Department of Information Resources manages Texas.gov. The new error follows a separate one tied to a software update on the Texas Department of Public Safety’s driver’s license portal, which left hundreds of thousands of registration records in a backlog that county officials said they cleared only this week.

“Just when most counties were seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, another unexpected backlog is being dropped on county voter registrars,” McGinn said. He called on the Texas Legislature for “action and accountability.”

Voters with questions about their registration should contact their county voter registrar.

Twice in one election season, the records of Texas voters have been held up inside systems the state pays outside vendors to run. Who answers for that, before the next election, is a question for the Legislature in Austin.