Texas DPS Error Leaves About 75,000 Harris County Voter Registrations Unprocessed Ahead of Oct. 5 Deadline

Harris County election officials are processing about 75,000 voter registration records after the Texas Department of Public Safety failed to send hundreds of thousands of applications submitted through its online driver’s license portal, according to a statement from the Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector’s office.

The Texas Secretary of State notified Harris County officials on Tuesday that 108,000 backlogged records had never been provided to the county because of the technical error. After removing thousands of duplicates, the tax assessor-collector’s office began processing around 75,000 registrations this week. About 2,000 of those records require additional review, the office said.

Samantha Kealoha, chief of staff for the tax assessor-collector’s office, said the error created confusion for voters and operational strain during one of the busiest stretches of the election calendar.

“Our team is working diligently and will process these unexpected records before early voting begins on October 19th, while continuing to meet our other critical voter registration responsibilities,” Kealoha said.

The deadline to register for the November election is Oct. 5. Early voting starts Oct. 19.

Statewide, the number of delayed records remains unsettled. Officials in seven of Texas’ 254 counties have confirmed receiving more than 178,000 combined records, some dating back to October 2025. The records may include new voter registrations or updates to existing voter files, such as address changes.

DPS has said the error is resolved but has not explained how it was fixed or what caused it.

Alicia Pierce, a spokesperson for the Texas Secretary of State, said the backlog should not affect voters’ registration status. She said a voter who registered through DPS online but does not appear on the rolls can still cast a provisional ballot.

State Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, said the secretary of state’s office should have detected the problem because it oversees the system counties use to receive files from DPS.

“If the files were received, pulled, or not, that should have been noticeable,” Bettencourt said. “They should have caught it.”

Bettencourt said he spoke with Texas Secretary of State Robert Howden after the error became public. Howden, who took office in July, recognized that the DPS failure had to be fixed and the backlog addressed quickly, Bettencourt said.

When asked about the error, Gov. Greg Abbott referred questions to DPS and the Secretary of State’s Office.

Texas Democratic Party Executive Director Terri Burke said state officials should provide more resources to county election offices handling the delayed records.

“In a state where only 61% of registered voters cast ballots in the 2024 general election, every legitimate voter should have confidence that the registration system will work when they use it,” Burke said.

The failure also drew attention to ongoing problems with TEAM, the state’s voter registration system, which the secretary of state’s office overhauled last summer. County election officials have reported functionality problems since before its July 2025 launch, including difficulty sorting applications by date and slow system performance. Bettencourt said he remains concerned about the system and the Louisiana-based vendor that built it, Civix.

Harris County voters can check their registration status at hctax.net.