League City voters in DPS error can cast provisional ballots

Thousands of Texas voter registrations submitted through the Department of Public Safety's online portal never reached county election offices. League City residents who used the system since October 2025 may be among them.

A third-party vendor's software update in October 2025 caused portions of registration records to be cut off before they reached the Texas Secretary of State's Office, the DPS said in a statement Friday, Sept. 25. The error went undetected for nearly a year. The Secretary of State's Office confirmed it received the corrected files on Sept. 18, and counties began processing them the same week.

Harris County alone reported receiving about 108,000 delayed records on Saturday, Sept. 26, according to CW39. After removing duplicates, the Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector's office was working through roughly 75,000 registrations, Houston Public Media reported. Neighboring Brazoria County received more than 9,000 records.

Across seven of Texas' 254 counties, officials confirmed receiving a combined 178,000-plus delayed records, Houston Public Media reported. No Galveston County figure has been made public.

What League City voters should know

The registration deadline for the Nov. 3 general election is Monday, Oct. 5. The Secretary of State's Office said all affected registrations will be backdated to the date they were originally submitted to DPS, so voters who registered on time will not lose eligibility.

If a voter's name does not appear on the rolls on Election Day, the state's guidance: cast a provisional ballot. The Secretary of State's Office said in a statement that election officials have a process to verify the registration with DPS, and if the voter did register, the provisional vote will be counted.

Samantha Kealoha, chief of staff for the Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector's office, said the situation "has caused confusion for the public and has created serious operational challenges during an already busy period for our office."

Counties must finish processing the backlogged applications before early voting begins Oct. 19. Some offices said they plan to hire temporary workers to handle the volume, ABC 13 reported. The Texas Association of County Election Officials said its members received no communication from DPS about why the backlog occurred or why they were not informed for nearly a year.

State Sen. Paul Bettencourt, a Houston Republican, said DPS should have caught the problem sooner. "If the files were received, pulled, or not, that should have been noticeable," Bettencourt told Houston Public Media on Friday, Sept. 25.

It remains unclear how many of the delayed records are new registrations versus address updates for voters already on the rolls. It is also unknown whether the error prevented anyone from voting in the March 2026 primary.

Early voting in League City

Galveston County early voting runs Oct. 19 through Oct. 30. Hours vary by week; check galvestonvotes.org for the full schedule. League City has four locations: