Texas DPS voter-registration failure leaves up to 750,000 applications unprocessed
A backlog dating to October 2025 has left tens of thousands of Texas voters off county rolls weeks before the registration deadline for the midterms.
What to know
- Texas DPS failed to properly process online voter registration applications tied to its driver's license/ID renewal portal, with the backlog dating to October 2025.
- Estimates of affected applications range from about 40,000 in Dallas County alone to as many as 750,000 statewide, with counties still awaiting an accurate count.
- Voters must register by Oct. 5, and counties have until early voting begins Oct. 19 to finish processing the backlog; voters can also cast provisional ballots.
- Democrats, including Senate candidate James Talarico, are demanding an investigation, and the error surfaced two months after Texas replaced its top election official, Robert Howden.
Chris McGinn Executive director, Texas Association of County Elections Officials
James Talarico U.S. Senate candidateRobert Howden Texas's newly installed top election officialTexas Department of Public Safety (DPS) State agency running the online registration portal
How it unfolded 2 developments, newest first · click a bar or a number to jump articlesposts
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Report on registration snafu spreads widely on social media
A Bluesky post sharing the Democracy Docket report on the backlog draws over 1,200 likes and dozens of comments, amplifying public attention to the issue.
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With 11 days until voter registration ends in Texas, election officials in counties across the state are scrambling to update voter rolls, a burdensome task during their busiest time of year.
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Coverage details deadlines and leadership change at issue
Reporting lays out that voters must register by Oct. 5 while counties have until early voting begins Oct. 19 to process the backlog, and notes Texas recently replaced its top election official, Robert Howden, whose office reportedly did not identify the error until county officials flagged it.
“I don’t know if they feel confident. Some counties are more confident than others. Right now what we’re seeing is these are pretty significant numbers of applications coming through.”
— Chris McGinn, Executive director, Texas Association of County Elections Officials · source -
background
Democrats demand probe into DPS registration error — Democratic officials, including U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico, call for an investigation into how the processing failure occurred and went undetected.
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background
County officials confirm scope of DPS registration backlog — On a call with reporters, Texas county election officials say the backlog dates to October 2025, with Dallas County alone reporting about 40,000 incomplete applications and other estimates reaching as high as 750,000 statewide; officials say they still lack an accurate count.
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DPS begins mishandling online voter registration data — A backlog of unprocessed voter registration applications starts accumulating after the Texas Department of Public Safety fails to properly transmit registrations submitted through its online driver's license and state ID renewal portal, the only online voter registration channel in the state.