County election staff across the Austin area — and across the state — are in a frenzy to process thousands of voter registration applications after the Texas Department of Public Safety failed to send them.
In a mass email to county registrars, the Texas Secretary of State's Office said certain voter registration records from online DPS transactions were "incomplete," resulting in them not being sent to counties for review. Some of the records dated back to October 2025, according to Texas Association of County Election Officials.
The error catapulted county election staff into an "all hands on deck" situation overnight, Travis County Voter Registrar Celia Israel said. Travis County received 32,000 voter registration applications from DPS on Tuesday, on top of 3,000 it received outside of the backlog, Israel said. In Williamson County, election administrators say they are working "around the clock" to process 18,000 applications. Hays County staff received 8,200.
Israel said in a statement she is "deeply disappointed in DPS," but that she has "the utmost confidence in the Travis County team to carry out our mission for eligible voters."
In an email, DPS said it "proactively identified" the issue in late August. The agency's own investigation into the incident revealed it was caused by an unnamed third-party vendor whose software handles batch voter registration applications. The vendor's software was updated in October 2025, causing portions of the records to be cut off, and because the records were incomplete, the Texas Secretary of State could not process them, DPS said.
The issue has riled up Texas Democrats, who have pointed out that even local voter registrars are required to submit voter registration applications to county tax offices no later than the fifth day after they are received. Several state Democrats have called for clearer answers.
"Abbott must give counties the resources to fix this mess," Rep. John H. Bucy III (D-Austin) said in a post on X. "We deserve answers about how this happened and why it wasn't caught sooner."
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