County election officials across Texas say the state's voter registration database is making it harder to clear a backlog of hundreds of thousands of records that reached them late because of a state software error, Votebeat and the Texas Tribune reported Monday, the last day to register for the Nov. 3 election.
The backlog traces to a problem with the Texas Department of Public Safety's online portal, which kept registrations and updates from being forwarded to counties. Officials now have to work through those records in TEAM, the statewide system that every county uses daily to maintain voter lists and run elections, while also handling the usual rush of last-minute paper applications.
Complaints from county offices
Shannon Lackey, the election administrator in Randall County in the Panhandle, told Votebeat her five-person office received 3,388 backlogged records and that she was still processing them after hours, often stopped by a message from the system saying only that an error had occurred. "I can't work right now," she said during one such stall.
Administrators described waits of up to 60 days for TEAM to complete the automated check that matches a registrant's name, birth date and partial Social Security or driver's license number against state records. Until that check clears, a voter may not appear on the rolls, Smith County elections administrator Michelle Allcon said.
In Brazos County, staff built their own spreadsheet to track more than 1,800 mail ballots because the system makes them update records one at a time.
The Texas Association of County Election Officials said in a statement that the problems stem from architecture failures by Civix, the Louisiana company that built the system, and urged the state to hold further payments until the software works reliably.
The state agreed to pay Civix $17 million, and up to $36 million if it renews the contract in October 2027, according to records Votebeat reviewed. Civix did not respond to Votebeat.
