Texas has more registered voters than ever heading into Monday's start of early voting, but county election offices spent the last days before the polls open sorting through a fresh batch of delayed records caused by another state error.
County officials learned Thursday that address changes Texans submitted through the state's online voter registration name and address change site from Sept. 1 until sometime last week had not reached them, the Texas Tribune and Votebeat reported Friday. Alicia Pierce, speaking for the Texas Secretary of State's Office, said the state forwarded 15,000 of the affected records to counties, and that some counties had none.
Election staff now have to sort out which of those changes arrived by Oct. 5, the deadline to register, because those must be updated before early voting starts Oct. 19.
Where the error came from
In an email to county officials Thursday, state elections director Christina Adkins described the problem as an extra address validation step involving Texas.gov, a state website that also offers online vehicle registration updates and other services.
She wrote that the company operating TEAM, the state's voter registration system, had reprocessed every file since Sept. 1 to find affected voters, and that many counties would see no additional records.
State elections officials told Votebeat the problem started with that vendor, Louisiana-based Civix. The Texas Department of Information Resources runs Texas.gov. The secretary of state's office and the department did not immediately answer the Tribune's requests for comment.
Chris McGinn, executive director of the Texas Association of County Election Officials, said some counties found the late records were missing needed address details, and that the state was escalating the problem. He also called for the Legislature to step in. "This continued mismanagement at the state level requires action and accountability from the Texas Legislature," McGinn said.
Earlier in the week, counties said they had cleared a much bigger pile: about 500,000 applications that a glitch in the Department of Public Safety's online driver's license portal had kept from reaching them. State officials said Wednesday that backlog had been resolved.
