Texas officials sent tens of thousands of delayed voter registration applications to county election officials this week after discovering an error, sparking a scramble to process them weeks out from the midterms.The Texas secretary of state’s told election officials last week that a problem with the Department of Public Safety’s system had been uncovered: certain incomplete voter registration applications that were missing some information were not sent on to election officials, potentially leaving Texans unregistered or with out-of-date voter files.The nonprofit news outlet Votebeat was the first to report the problem.State officials started transmitting the records on Tuesday.
It’s unclear exactly how many voters were affected, but large counties have reported tens of thousands of registration applications and updates that election officials must process in less than a month before early voting begins on Oct.19.
And more applications are sure to pour in ahead of the Oct.5 deadline to register to vote in Texas.The state’s fourth-most populous county, Bexar, received more than 45,000 voter registration forms from DPS, and the fifth-most populous, Travis County, received more than 35,000.“While that number may seem high, the Elections team is already hard at work reviewing every application and will be extending hours to make sure all records are updated well before early voting begins,” Bexar County Elections Administrator Michele Carew said in a statement.Chris McGinn, the executive director of the Texas Association of County Election Officials, said he expected populous, urban areas will be hit hardest, because there are more voter registrations to process and people in cities tend to move more often.
“There’s going to be a lot of counties that are paying a lot of overtime,” he said, speaking in a press briefing organized by the nonpartisan Center of Election Innovation and Research.McGinn said some of the records may be duplicative — peopl...