The deadline to register to vote in Texas for the November 3 election is Monday, October 5, and county registrars are still working through applications the Department of Public Safety never sent them. Texas law requires voters to register by the 30th day before Election Day. Early voting runs October 19 through October 30, and an application for a ballot by mail must be received by Friday, October 23, according to the Secretary of State’s office.
The backlog is larger than the first count showed. The Secretary of State notified Harris County on September 22 of 108,000 registration records that DPS had never passed along, Houston Public Media reported. After removing thousands of duplicates, the Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector’s office began processing about 75,000 of them last week, with 2,000 flagged for further review. Seven other counties had earlier confirmed more than 178,000 backlogged records among them, led by Dallas County, according to a Votebeat and Texas Tribune count.
“Our team is working diligently and will process these unexpected records before early voting begins on October 19th,” said Samantha Kealoha, chief of staff to the Harris County tax assessor-collector.
The records came from Texans who registered or updated their registration through DPS’s online driver’s license portal, some as far back as October 2025. Alicia Pierce, a spokesperson for the Secretary of State, said the backlog should not affect voters’ registration status, and that a voter who registered through DPS online but does not appear on the rolls can cast a provisional ballot, which counts once the registration is confirmed. The Secretary of State’s office runs an “Am I Registered?” portal where any voter can check a registration’s status.
The Partisan reported the DPS failure on September 25. State officials have not said what caused it or how many Texans statewide it reached.
Harris County has set itself until October 19 to finish the state’s backlog. The deadline for voters is October 5.
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