Texas counties process 178,000-plus delayed voter registration records

A state technology error left some new and updated voter registration applications in limbo for almost a year, never forwarded to county voter registrars. Counties are now working through the delayed records, some dating back to October 2025. 

The backlog arrives less than two weeks before the Oct. 5 voter registration deadline. Early voting for the November midterms begins Oct. 19, leaving counties little time to process the records and update voter rolls. 

More than 40 states offer online voter registration, but Texas does not. Most new applicants must submit a signed paper application, though voters can update existing records online through Texas.gov. Texans who renew or change the address on a driver’s license through the Texas Department of Public Safety’s (DPS) online portal can also register or update their registration there. About 6 million Texans used that portal from 2020 through 2024, according to DPS testimony to lawmakers in 2025. 

State officials have not said how many records were affected. Officials in seven counties have confirmed receiving more than 178,000 records combined, according to Votebeat and The Texas Tribune, but the statewide total is still unknown. Many of the records may belong to voters whose registrations are already accurate and need no changes. 

The registration snafu first surfaced through a notification from Civix, the state’s election technology vendor. On Sept. 16, the Texas Secretary of State’s (SOS) Elections Division told county officials that the company behind TEAM, the statewide voter registration system, had flagged an issue with DPS files. Counties had reported older DPS registrations appearing on their dashboards, and SOS asked Civix to temporarily remove the files while the state investigated. 

Most of Texas’ 254 counties use TEAM, which the state provides at no cost. A small number, including large urban counties such as Tarrant, Denton, Collin, El Paso and Bexar, instead contract with a state-approved private vendor. State law still requires those “offline” counties to sync their data with TEAM daily. 

On Sept. 22, SOS said DPS had identified incomplete online driver’s license transaction records, which prevented the files from being sent to counties. Officials have not said what information was missing or what caused the records to be incomplete. 

TEAM and its vendor under scrutiny 

The backlog adds to months of scrutiny of TEAM and Civix. At a June 23 Senate State Affairs Committee hearing, lawmakers asked SOS for assurances that problems with the voter registration and election management system would be fixed before the November midterm election. Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, who oversaw voter registration in Harris County for a decade as its tax assessor-collector, said he had heard complaints about the system from election officials in Travis, Austin and Jackson counties, among others. 

Bettencourt questioned whether Civix was falling behind on delivering fixes and asked Elections Director Christina Adkins directly whether the company was up to the job. Adkins said it was, and that her office was working with the vendor on fixes. She added that Civix also manages voter registration systems in Louisiana and Iowa, but that Texas is the company’s largest customer for election management and voter registration software. 

The concerns predate the hearing. County election officials’ groups had asked the state to halt the TEAM update rollout in letters sent in October 2025 and February 2026. 

Bettencourt renewed his criticism after the backlog surfaced. He told Votebeat that although a DPS failure is at the heart of the problem, SOS should have caught it because the agency oversees TEAM, the system counties use to receive DPS files. He also described TEAM’s functionality as basic to rudimentary for modern voter registration. 

TEAM’s troubles are not new. Texas built the system in the mid-2000s to meet a federal Help America Vote Act requirement that every state keep a single, computerized statewide voter registration list. IBM built it using software from Austin-based Hart InterCivic. 

A 2007 State Auditor’s Office report found that nearly half of Texas’ 254 counties said TEAM was slow and did not let them do their jobs effectively. Auditors also found weaknesses in the state’s processes for keeping voter rolls accurate, identifying more than 49,000 registered voters who may have been ineligible, such as deceased voters and people with felony convictions. 

Those early problems drove dozens of counties, including the largest, to keep their own voter registration systems through private vendors. Many of those counties remain offline today. 

In 2014, SOS selected PCC Technology Group to redevelop TEAM under a contract that ran through 2021. GCR Inc. acquired PCC in 2016 and later consolidated its companies under the Civix brand. The company has been behind TEAM for more than a decade. 

Civix now holds a $17 million contract with SOS for the TEAM Replacement Solution, according to public records. The contract took effect in October 2023 and is funded with state dollars and federal Help America Vote Act funds. It requires the company to configure, implement, host, maintain and support the statewide voter registration system, including integrating with external data providers, routing DMV voter registration requests to county dashboards and exchanging data with offline counties. 

The upgraded TEAM launched in July 2025. The current contract term runs through October 2027, with renewals that could extend it to 10 years. 

Counties race to clear backlog 

Processing of the backlogged files began the evening of Sept. 22. For counties that work directly in TEAM, the state identified voters who had submitted more recent registration updates. It withheld the older DPS records for those voters so they would not overwrite newer information. 

Offline counties face a heavier lift. SOS said it could not run the same analysis for them, so they will receive all affected DPS records and must review them manually. 

The state is posting those files to county data warehouses in batches and coordinating with offline county vendors to size the batches for their systems. SOS said it is also working with DPS to make sure the system changes made to fix the problem do not affect daily file transfers going forward. 

SOS said the backlogged applications will take effect on the date of the original DPS transaction. Anyone who registered through DPS online services and isn’t on the voter rolls will be able to cast a provisional ballot. The Texas Association of County Election Officials (TACEO) urged voters to confirm their registration status online or with their county voter registrar. 

The backlog also touches the state’s suspense list, which includes about 1.2 million Texas voters. According to TACEO, a voter is placed in suspense when the county registrar has reason to believe the voter no longer lives at the address on file, usually because the registration certificate mailed every two years came back undeliverable. TACEO stressed that suspense status is an address question, not a removal. 

Voters who have not moved, or who moved within the same county, can still vote after completing a statement of residence. A registration is canceled only if the voter stays in suspense through two consecutive federal general elections without responding or voting. TACEO said the current total is consistent with, and often lower than, recent election cycles, down from about 2 million in November 2024. 

Some of those voters may have updated their addresses through DPS, only to have the change stuck in the backlog. Bexar County Elections Administrator Michele Carew said voters in suspense who submitted a new address in a DPS transaction will have their records updated and be removed from the list. 

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