Texas voter registration glitch forces rushed processing before midterm deadline

Texas election administrators found that a batch of voter registration forms generated by the Department of Public Safety’s online system had been marked incomplete, preventing them from being forwarded to county election offices. Christina Adkins, the state elections director, said the department is correcting the software and will begin transmitting the pending applications to counties starting Tuesday night. Local officials now face a tight schedule to process the backlog before the October 5 registration deadline for the November 3 midterm elections, which include a gubernatorial race and a contested Senate seat.

Counties that manage the state’s voter database will replace older records with newer ones, while those using third-party software must manually verify updates. Voters whose registrations were affected may still cast provisional ballots, which will be counted if the deadline was met. The state advises residents to verify their status via the VoteTexas.gov portal.