Galveston County voters who registered through the state's online driver's license portal could be affected by a software error at the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) that prevented some voter-registration records from reaching county election officials.
The failure, which also hit other Texas counties, was confirmed in a Sept. 22 email from the Secretary of State's Elections Division to county officials. Votebeat first reported the story Wednesday, Sept. 23. State officials have not disclosed how many voters were affected, what information was missing from the records, or when the problem started.
The registration deadline for the Nov. 3 general election is Monday, Oct. 5.
The DPS portal is a major registration channel. About 6 million Texans used it to register between 2020 and 2024, according to DPS testimony to state lawmakers in 2025.
How the problem surfaced
County election officials noticed a surge of older voter registration applications appearing in TEAM, the state's voter registration system, around Sept. 16. In a Sept. 16 email to county officials, state elections director Christina Adkins said her office was investigating and had asked Civix, the vendor that built the latest version of TEAM, to pull the files from county dashboards.
By Tuesday, Sept. 22, the Elections Division had identified the cause. DPS had determined that certain online transaction records were incomplete, which blocked their transmission to counties. The state began delivering the backlogged records to counties at 5 p.m. that day.
Adkins said the state was also working with DPS to confirm that the system fix would not disrupt daily registration files going forward, according to Votebeat.
What this means for Galveston County
Votebeat reported that Galveston County is among the counties affected.
Counties that work directly in TEAM will receive only records that do not duplicate a voter's newer registration update. Counties that use third-party software must sort through all the backlogged records manually, a larger processing burden close to the registration deadline. Whether Galveston County falls into the first or second category could not be confirmed from available records.
What affected voters should do
Alicia Pierce, a spokesperson for the Secretary of State's office, told Votebeat that voters whose registrations were submitted before the Oct. 5 deadline can still have their ballots counted.
"A voter who registered through DPS online services but does not appear on the rolls can cast a provisional ballot," Pierce said. Election officials have a process to verify the registration with DPS, and if the voter did register, the provisional vote will be counted, she said.
Galveston County residents can check their registration status or ask questions by contacting the Galveston County Clerk's office, which serves as the county's voter registrar, at 409-766-2280. The office is at the Records and Election Center, 10000 Emmett F. Lowry Expwy., Suite 1152, Texas City.
The Texas Association of County Election Officials is collecting data from its members to determine the full scale of the failure.
