Texas DPS voter registration error leaves thousands of applications unprocessed ahead of midterm deadline
DPS delay impacts thousands of Texas voter registrations
Tens of thousands of voter registration applications have not been processed due to a Texas Department of Public Safety delay with early voting beginning in less than a month. FOX 4's Steven Dial has more.
DALLAS - Less than two weeks before the voter registration deadline for the November midterm election, some Texas voter registration applications are still waiting to be processed.
Texas DPS Voter Registration Error
FILE: A stack of Texas voter registration forms. (Photo by BRYAN R. SMITH/AFP via Getty Images)
What we know:
The problem stems from a Department of Public Safety error. The department didn’t send applications to county voting officials for processing.
The error was first reported by the nonprofit news organization Votebeat. The information was confirmed in an email that the Texas Secretary of State sent to county election officials.
State officials reportedly just started sending the applications to county voting offices on Tuesday night, giving those workers less than two weeks to process them before the registration deadline for the midterms.
However, the Secretary of State’s Office assured the effective date of all the backlog applications will be the day of the DPS transaction. Any voters who registered through DPS online services that are not on the voter rolls will be able to cast a provisional ballot.
By the numbers:
It’s not clear how many applications are incomplete. The Texas Association of County Election Officials said it is still collecting information from its members to determine the scale of the issue.
However, Dallas County alone has about 40,000 records that were not processed until now. In other counties, that number ranges from a few hundred to a few thousand.
The records reportedly date back to this past October. So, it’s about an 11-month backlog.
Error leads to unprocessed Texas voter applications
Some Texas voter applications are still waiting to be processed after a DPS error. The department did not send applications to county voting officials.
Local perspective:
FOX 4's Steven Dial spoke to several election administrators about the DPS delay.
"When in doubt, if you're still concerned, I would fill out a voter registration application and walk it over to your local voter registration office and deposit that," Chris McGinn, Executive Director of the Texas Asosciation of County Elections Officials, said. Because again, those duplicates won't override anything. It will simply ensure that you're registered to vote."
"The poll book is the digital tablet that we use to look up voters when they come vote. We can push out updates to those poll books even while voting is going on. So yes, I'm 100 percent confident that any voter who's eligible to vote in the November ballot will receive a ballot," Collin County Elections Administrator Kaleb Breaux tells FOX 4's Steven Dial.
Political Leaders React
What they're saying:
"This is not the first warning sign. The Secretary of State’s voter registration system has faced documented problems for months, including failures affecting voter searches and election reports. Now, we are learning that an unknown number of voter registration applications were never sent to county officials because of incomplete records," the Texas Democratic Party said in part in a statement.
Democratic U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico said Texans deserve answers.
"The Texas Department of Public Safety’s failure to process voter registration applications is unacceptable. Less than two weeks before the voter registration deadline, thousands of Texans are now in the dark about their voter registration status — even more aren’t aware of this error at all," Talarico said in a statement.
The other side:
Texas GOP leaders have not yet responded to a request for a comment.
The Source: The information in this story comes from the Texas Secretary of State's Office, the Texas Association of County Election Officials, and statements from Texas Democrats and U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico.