An unknown number of thousands of Texas voter registration applications are currently unprocessed after a Texas Department of Public Safety error weeks ahead of the midterm election, according to a Sept. 23 news release from the Travis County Tax Office.
The Travis County Tax Office received approximately 32,000 applications in one night from DPS with “no direct communication,” said Celia Israel, Travis County tax assessor-collector and voter registrar.
The voter registration deadline is Monday, before midnight, and early voting begins Oct. 19.
Those impacted will not have to re-register and will be able to participate in early voting, but may appear in the system after the registration deadline.
“We will do everything that we can to make sure that all of that data is entered by the time early voting starts on the 19th,” Israel said.
In the case someone registered to vote and is not in the system before early voting, they can vote using a provisional ballot, which is specifically designed to ensure voters are not excluded on Election Day. The specific ballots will be issued at the polling site during early voting and Election Day.
In an X post, State Sen. Paul Bettencourt, (R-Texas), said approximately 178,000 registration forms, some dating back to October 2025, never reached the proper election offices because of “typical unintended IT upgrade consequences.”
Texas is one of eight U.S. states that does not offer online voter registration, except for when someone renews or updates their driver’s license on the DPS website, according to the League of Women Voters.
“These problems are caused because we have so many disparate systems trying to communicate with one another that when, you know, there’s an update to one and it’s not recognized by the others, that’s when we run into these problems,” said Joyce LeBombard, the voting rights and election law issue chair for the League of Women Voters of Texas.
In response to the influx of applications in an already busy season, Israel said many offices, including Travis County, have employed the help of extra staff.
“It’s a huge swarm of paper and a swarm of data, and it’s all very exciting because this is a historic election,” Israel said. “I just think there’s so much positive energy around voting. I welcome it. It makes me happy that people are interested in getting registered to vote; that’s a good thing.”
To find out if you are registered to vote, visit votetexas.gov.
