Texas

Texas election officials work to clear voter registration backlog, say Texas TEAM system makes that harder | Natalia Contreras/Votebeat

Texas election administrators are struggling to process a massive backlog of voter registration applications just weeks before the midterm registration deadline, following a state software glitch at the Department of Public Safety. To make matters worse, county clerks report frequent system crashes, unhandled errors, and interface delays in the upgraded statewide voter registration database, known as TEAM. While larger, better-funded jurisdictions have hired external software vendors to navigate the administrative surge, smaller counties remain reliant on manual workarounds and overtime hours, raising fears that unverified voter applications could result in disenfranchisement or administrative confusion at polling locations. Read Article

Texas GOP lawmaker says state should have caught error that delayed at least 178,000 voter registrations | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

A key Texas Republican lawmaker says state officials must be held accountable for an error that led to a backlog of at least 178,000 voter registration applications from the Texas Department of Public Safety. Votebeat reported earlier this week that DPS failed to send counties thousands of voter registration applications and updates submitted through its online driver’s license portal. Some of those date back at least a year, and counties are now being hit with a deluge of applications to process in the weeks leading up to November’s midterm election. State Sen. Paul Bettencourt, a Republican from Houston who has championed election administration legislation for years, told Votebeat on Thursday that although a DPS failure is at the heart of the problem, the Texas Secretary of State’s office should have caught the issue because it oversees the system the counties use to receive the files from DPS. “If the files were received, pulled, or not, that should have been noticeable,” Bettencourt said. “They should have caught it.” Read Article

Texas: Tarrant County removes 92 polling sites ahead of November election | Cecilia Lenzen/The Texas Tribune

Tarrant County commissioners voted 3-2 Tuesday to approve a list of polling sites for the November elections that included 92 fewer sites than the 2022 midterms. The approval came after commissioners heard testimony from more than 100 speakers, the majority of whom were opposed to the site cuts, during a meeting that lasted over eight hours. Voting rights advocates and representatives of 30 civic groups rallied outside the county courthouse Tuesday morning, demanding that commissioners approve a list with the same number of sites as the 2022 midterms. The adopted list includes 224 sites for Election Day and 47 for early voting. The 2022 list included 316 Election Day sites and 50 for early voting. Read Article

Texas appeals court won’t block GOP-led county from changing voting maps after primary | Yunior Rivas/Democracy Docket

A Texas appeals court Thursday denied an emergency effort to stop Galveston County from using new voting districts in the November election, allowing the GOP-led county’s post-primary map change to move forward for now as the general election approaches. The 14th Court of Appeals rejected a petition from pro-voting plaintiffs who asked the court to block Galveston County from implementing district boundaries adopted after the March 2026 primaries. The plaintiffs argued that county officials should not be allowed to hold primary elections under one set of district lines and then use different boundaries for the general election just months later. Read Article

Texas’ mail ballot ID requirements restored by federal appeals court | Ayden Runnels/The Texas Tribune

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday restored several pieces of a 2021 Texas election law that overhauled mail-in and assisted voting, overturning a lower court’s block on those provisions. Five years ago, Texas passed Senate Bill 1, a wide-reaching election law that changed the way local officials administer elections and how some Texans vote, particularly aimed at initiatives Harris County implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic. The law was denounced by voter advocacy groups, civil rights organizations and Democratic lawmakers, who broke quorum in an attempt to stifle the bill. After several lawsuits over accessibility concerns created by the new law were consolidated into a single suit, a district judge in March 2025 struck down nine of its provisions. Those blocked provisions included requiring Texans to provide an identification number or social security number on mail in ballot applications and have them match the state’s records. The judge also blocked provisions that create processes for curing defective ballots and require voters and those who assist them in filling out their ballot to sign an oath swearing they did not coerce the voter and disclose how they’re related. Read Article

Texas: Fracas over Tarrant County poll sites highlights public distrust | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

Tuesday’s chaotic public meeting over the number of voting sites in Tarrant County for the upcoming November election highlighted public distrust in election administration decisions and the people making them in the state’s most populous purple county, experts and voting rights advocates said. Hundreds of people showed up at the Tarrant County Commissioners Court meeting to oppose a proposal to significantly reduce the number of polling sites on Election Day, from 316 used in the 2022 midterm elections to 176. At least one person, a former Democratic state representative, was arrested after Tim O’Hare, the county’s executive and a Republican, kicked everyone out of the chambers, saying that people clapping and speaking loudly were disruptive. O’Hare also called multiple recesses during the meeting, prolonging it as people waited to speak. Speaker after speaker described the effort to reduce the number of locations as the latest in a series of efforts by O’Hare and the majority-Republican commissioners’ court to make it harder for residents to vote, something commissioners said wasn’t true. O’Hare and Commissioner Manny Ramirez, also a Republican, are both on the ballot in November. Read Article

Texas officials confirm that some registered voters flagged as potential noncitizens by SAVE had already provided proof of citizenship | Natalia Contreras/Votebeat

Election officials across the state should immediately reinstate some voters who were incorrectly flagged as potential noncitizens through a federal program, the Texas Secretary of State’s Office told county officials Wednesday. Christina Adkins, the state elections director, told county officials the state had reviewed Texas Department of Public Safety records confirming the citizenship of some of the 2,724 registered voters who were flagged as potential noncitizens, according to an audio recording of her comments obtained by Votebeat and The Texas Tribune, as well as election officials who heard them. The voters were flagged after the state checked its voter roll through a federal program called Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, used to verify the citizenship of people registered to vote. Read Article

Texas: Robert Howden, Abbott aide, to succeed Jane Nelson as top election official | Eleanor Klibanoff/The Texas Tribune

Robert Howden, a senior adviser to Gov. Greg Abbott, will be Texas’ interim secretary of state, Abbott announced Friday. Howden is a longtime Texas politico who worked for GOP governors going back to Bill Clements, serving as Abbott’s legislative director since 2024. Howden is replacing Jane Nelson, who left her post Friday as Texas’ top election official after three and a half years. Nelson’s resignation, announced in early June, set off a flurry of speculation about why she was leaving and who would replace her ahead of the contentious midterm elections in November. Howden will need to be confirmed by the Texas Senate when the Legislature returns in January, but can serve until then without legislative approval. Nelson’s three immediate predecessors in the role resigned before the Senate got a chance to approve them. Read Article

Texas secretary of state raised concerns about federal SAVE program used to verify voters’ citizenship | Natalia Contreras/Votebeat

The Texas Secretary of State’s Office used a controversial federal data tool to flag more than 2,000 potential noncitizens on the state’s voter roll last year. But in an April letter to federal immigration officials, Secretary of State Jane Nelson raised concerns about its accuracy. In that letter to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officials, obtained as part of a public records request by Democracy Forward — a nonprofit legal organization advocating for democracy through litigation and public policy — and shared with Votebeat, Nelson said her office wanted “to make sure that you are using the most accurate data,” and asked agency officials to notify her office if they are able to “confirm the citizenship of any individuals previously identified as non-citizens” in the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, system. Alicia Pierce, a spokesperson for the secretary of state’s office, said the agency has not yet received a response from USCIS. Nelson resigned from her role last month. Her last day is July 17, and the governor has not yet appointed a replacement.. Read Article

Texas Attorney General’s voter registration may violate Texas election law | Zach Despart/The Texas Tribune

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton appears to have used an address where he did not live while voting in six elections in the past two years, including in May’s runoff that made him the Republican nominee for U.S. senator. State Sen. Angela Paxton said in a 2025 divorce filing that Paxton, whom she accused of adultery, moved out of their Collin County home a year earlier. But Paxton continues to list the home’s address in the northern Dallas suburb on his voter registration. Angela Paxton declined to be interviewed. A source close to the Paxtons said the attorney general has not moved back into the home since leaving. It is unclear where Paxton has lived for the past two years, but reporting by ProPublica and the Tribune has linked him to a home in neighboring Denton County since February. Read Article

Texas lawmakers seek fixes to statewide voter registration system | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

Texas lawmakers on Tuesday asked the Texas Secretary of State’s Office for assurances that issues with the state’s voter registration and election management system would be fixed before the November midterm election. “Those fixes have to be done, because if we go into a November election and we don’t, we can’t claim that we have integrity in the voter roll,” said state Sen. Paul Bettencourt, a Republican from Harris County, during a Senate State Affairs Committee hearing that addressed voter registration and voter list maintenance issues. Bettencourt said he’s heard complaints about the system, known as TEAM, from election officials in Travis, Austin, and Jackson counties, among others. Christina Adkins, the elections division director at the secretary of state’s office, said the agency is “dedicating every possible resource that we have within our office to resolving these issues.” Read Article

Texas: Why the GOP wants closed primaries and what that could mean for vote | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

After an unsuccessful legislative push last year to close the primary elections, when voters choose a party’s nominees for the November general elections, state Republicans sued to make it happen. That litigation is still pending in federal court, but Abbott wants state lawmakers to try again. Lawmakers “can and should be more responsive to Republicans than a judge may be,” Abbott told the Texas Scorecard, a conservative news outlet. Administratively, changing the state’s current system could be complicated because the state’s more than 18 million registered voters have never had to declare a party affiliation. And the state’s voter registration system is not designed to accommodate that. Election policy experts are wondering whether switching to closed primaries would mean requiring all voters to re-register with a party affiliation. That could be a big lift not just for voters but for the state, which would have to redesign its forms and software to allow for voters to list a party affiliation. It’s not yet clear how long that would take and how much it could cost. Read Article

Texas local election officials await secretary of state pick | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson’s unexpected departure only a few months before the November midterm election, which includes one of the most hotly contested U.S. Senate races the state has seen in years, has some local election officials and voting rights advocates worrying the transition will complicate their ability to administer a smooth election. “It’s the unknown, the uncertainty that is scary,” said Tandi Smith, the Kaufman County elections administrator. “Are we going to continue to receive guidance? Are we going to be ensured that we’ll be prepared for any coming changes? We just don’t know.” Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, is required by law to appoint a new secretary as soon as possible. His office, in an emailed statement, said the new appointee would be announced “at a later date.” Read Article

Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson stepping down | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson announced Tuesday she will resign effective July 17, capping off three and a half years as the state’s top election official. “It has been my goal to ensure that voting in Texas is secure, accessible and fair,” Nelson said in a press release. “We have worked extensively to ensure accurate voter rolls and to educate voters about what they need to know to vote with confidence.” The press release did not say why Nelson is resigning from her role. Her office did not respond to a request for comment. By law, Gov. Greg Abbott is required to nominate someone to fill the vacant position “without delay.” It’s unclear how quickly Abbott will move to fill Nelson’s role or whom he is considering for the job. Read Article

Texas: Calm, not chaos, as Dallas County voters cast ballots in runoff with countywide system | Tracey McManus/The Dallas Morning News

Voting unfolded slowly but smoothly in Dallas County’s runoff on Tuesday, a change from the chaos that took place during the March 3 primary election. After the county Republican Party forced a switch to precinct-based voting, thousands of confused voters from both parties, accustomed to the vote-anywhere system, were turned away from polls and redirected to their neighborhood voting sites. Making matters worse, some voters were sent to the wrong polls by incorrect maps on the Secretary of State’s website and others received bad information from navigators stationed at voting sites. It prompted former Republican Party Chair Allen West to amend the GOP’s contract with the county to revert to the countywide system for the runoff, citing a fear of being sued for voter disenfranchisement. Because county officials control early voting in Texas, the Republicans’ push for precincts applied only to the primary and runoff election days. Read Article

Texas using DPS records to confirm citizenship of voters flagged by federal database | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribine

The Texas Secretary of State’s Office is now checking whether 2,724 registered voters it flagged as potential noncitizens may have already provided proof of citizenship to the Texas Department of Public Safety, Christina Adkins, elections division director, said during a meeting with county election administrators earlier this month. That check comes after county elections officials found the federal database used to generate the list flagged some voters who had already given citizenship documentation to DPS when they registered to vote. Texas officials in October sent counties the list of potential noncitizens generated by checking the state’s roll of more than 18 million registered voters against a federal database used to verify citizenship. County election officials have since confirmed some of the flagged voters were citizens, though a total number was not immediately available. In addition, they found that hundreds of the flagged voters had registered through DPS, which requires proof of citizenship, such as a passport, and keeps copies of such documents on file. Read Article

Texas election officials face growing fatigue as back-to-back elections stretch staff, volunteers | Daisy Escatel and Ella Mitchell/KETK

As early voting begins Monday for Texas’ primary runoff elections, county election offices across the state are preparing for yet another round of voting in what has become an increasingly relentless election calendar. For some Texas counties, the May 27 primary runoff marks the third election since March, with additional runoff elections and potential constitutional amendment elections still ahead later this year. Election administrators say the nonstop cycle is pushing both full-time staff and volunteer poll workers to their limits. Texas voters have already participated in several elections in 2026, beginning with the March primary elections, followed by city, school and special elections in May. In many communities, races that failed to produce a majority winner have triggered runoff elections, requiring county offices to quickly reset and prepare all over again. Read Article

In Texas political parties choose how to run their primaries. Here’s how that causes headaches for voters. | Natalia Contreras/Dallas Free Press

By all accounts, the administration of the 2026 primary election in Williamson County was calamitous. Voters did not know where to vote. Lines were long and chaotic. Election workers made errors and misplaced ballots. Nearly everyone seems to agree on who’s to blame: the Williamson County Republican Party, which last fall decided to eliminate countywide voting and, for the first time in more than a decade, force all voters to cast ballots at assigned precincts instead. Republicans in Dallas and Eastland counties made the same decision. The moves set off a chain reaction of problems. “It was a mess, and I’m not going to deny that it was a mess,” said Michelle Evans, the chair of the Williamson County GOP, at a county commissioners court meeting days after the March election, though she said Republicans weren’t the only ones responsible. The meeting, inside the county courthouse in downtown Georgetown, an affluent suburb of Austin, was packed with upset voters and poll workers, who applauded a line of unhappy speakers. Read Article

Texas appeals court rejects Dallas County Republican’s move to force precincts in runoff | Tracey McManus/The Dallas Morning News

One month before the primary runoff, a Texas appeals court has rejected a Republican precinct chair’s emergency effort to force the Dallas County elections chief to reinstate precinct-based voting. he ruling leaves countywide voting in place for the May 26 runoff, but the conflict may not be over, with GOP leaders weighing next legal steps as Democrats cheered the decision as a win for voter access. In a petition filed last week, Barry Wernick alleged that former Dallas County Republican chair Allen West’s amendment to the party’s contract with the county that scrapped precincts for the runoff was invalid because he did not have authorization from the party’s executive committee. Read Article

Texas: New lawsuit seeks to force Dallas County to use precinct voting again for runoff after messy primary | Natalia Contreras/Votebeat

Some Dallas County Republicans on Monday sued the county elections department in a bid to require voters to cast ballots for the May 26 primary runoff at specific polling places in their precincts rather than any location in the county. That precinct-based voting system on primary election day in March created chaos. Local party leadership is trying to reverse a decision made by its former chair, who resigned last week after facing backlash for agreeing to use countywide voting on election day in the runoff. But early voting for the runoff election starts May 18, and Dallas County election officials say it’s too late to change course. The lawsuit, filed in the Texas Fifth Court of Appeals by Barry Wernick, a Republican precinct chair and a candidate for Dallas County Commissioner District 2, is asking the court to require the county to use precinct polling places for the runoff election. Some Dallas Republicans sue county to force a return to precinct voting for May runoff - Votebeat

Texas counties receive subpoenas for voters’ records from Department of Homeland Security | Natalia Contreras/Houston Public Media

At least three Texas counties last week either received or were told they would soon receive administrative subpoenas from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The department is seeking detailed records about some individual voters, including their registration applications and voter history, though counties don't yet know which ones. The subpoenas appear to be linked to a series of efforts by the Trump administration to verify the citizenship of registered voters. In December, Texas turned over the state's voter roll to the Justice Department. The transfer included voters' identifiable information such as dates of birth, driver's license numbers, and partial Social Security numbers. It did not include, however, voters' registration applications or signatures — the state does not have access to that information, which is kept by county voter registrars. Lubbock County's elections administrator, Roxzine Stinson, said she met with a Homeland Security representative who informed her she would soon receive a subpoena seeking additional information for at least 10 voters, and potentially up to 30. Stinson said she'll seek guidance from the county's legal department on how to respond. The Homeland Security representative told Stinson, "all 254 counties will be contacted," she said. Read Article

Texas: Thousands of Dallas County voters went to wrong polling site | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

At least 12,674 Dallas County voters trying to cast ballots in both party primaries showed up at the wrong polling locations March 3 after the county GOP forced the elimination of countywide polling sites on election day, county data shows. Democrats had more than double the number of primary voters in Dallas County as Republicans so, unsurprisingly, a larger number of Democratic voters had to be redirected to the correct site, according to a Votebeat analysis of data provided by Dallas County election officials. But similar percentages of voters from both parties were affected by the change. Out of the total voter turnout on election day, at least 6,641 voters, or 7.7%, seeking to cast ballots in the Democratic primary, and 2,369 voters, or 6.4%, seeking to cast ballots in the Republican primary, went to the wrong voting site. Those voters subsequently received texts from county representatives stationed at polling sites to redirect voters to the correct places, according to the county data, which was obtained by Votebeat via a public records request. Read Article

Texas: Dallas County GOP will OK countywide voting sites for May 26 runoff | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

Dallas County Republicans will agree to allow voters to cast ballots at countywide voting sites for the May 26 runoff election after a switch to precinct-based voting sites caused chaos, the county party chair said Tuesday. Dallas County Republican Chair Allen West supported the use of precinct-based sites earlier this month, but said using precincts again for the runoff would expose the county party to “increased risk and voter confusion” because the county is planning to use countywide sites for upcoming municipal elections and early voting. “To then shift for the one day runoff election to precincts would bring about large scale disruption,” West said in a statement. That’s what critics say resulted from the Dallas GOP’s decision to use precinct sites on Election Day for the primary on March 3. Dallas GOP will OK countywide voting sites for May 26 runoff

Texas: Problems with primary election could be midterms preview | Nathaniel Rakich/Votebeat

Election officials, start your engines.The 2026 midterm elections officially kicked off last week with primary elections in Arkansas, North Carolina, and Texas. It was the first big test for hundreds of candidates who are vying to take up residence in Washington, D.C., and state capitals next year — but it was also a dress rehearsal for election officials in a year expected to pose unusual and daunting administrative challenges.And things were a little rocky.While the election went smoothly for a majority of voters and jurisdictions, thousands of voters were affected by problems in Texas in particular.Some of those — like a poll-worker shortage in South Texas or malfunctioning electronic pollbooks in northeastern North Carolina and El Paso, Texas — were routine, inevitable in a country with thousands of election jurisdictions and just as many things that can go wrong. Read Article

Texas: Calhoun County GOP missed deadline to report primary election results after choosing to hand-count ballots | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

<p>Calhoun County finished submitting its primary election results to the state Friday morning after county Republicans, who hand counted their primary ballots, missed a deadline in state law requiring them to submit early-voting and Election Day results to the county no later than 24 hours after polls closed, a county election official said. Mary Ann Orta, the elections administrator in the South Texas county, which includes Victoria and Port Lavaca, and the Texas Secretary of State’s Office both confirmed the county GOP missed the deadline and its results were submitted to the state Friday morning. The results for county Democrats, who used electronic voting equipment to tabulate ballots, were submitted to the state not long after the polls closed on Tuesday night, Orta said. In Texas, political parties decide at the county level how their primaries will be administered, and Calhoun Republicans chose to hand count ballots this year, including those cast early and at 11 Republican precincts on Election Day, a labor-intensive process. <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2026/03/06/texas-counties-hand-count-ballots-deadline/" data-type="link" data-id="https://www.texastribune.org/2026/03/06/texas-counties-hand-count-ballots-deadline/">Read Article</a></p>

Texas: In Dallas County, frustration and confusion after GOP forces switch to precinct-based voting | Camilo Diaz Jr. and Jessica Huseman/The Texas Tribune

Veronica Anderson walked 2 ½ miles Tuesday afternoon to the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center because she wanted to vote. When she arrived, election workers told her she was at the wrong polling place and would need to cast her ballot at a different precinct — one she said she had never heard of. Unsure where it was or how to get there, she stood outside trying to sort out her options. Anderson was one of hundreds of voters across Dallas County on Tuesday who went to the wrong voting location as they tried to cast ballots in the state’s high-turnout primaries, with closely watched contests for U.S. Senate at the top of the ticket. Under state law, political parties have wide authority to decide how to run county primaries. The confusion stemmed from a decision by the Dallas County Republican Party to abandon the use of countywide vote centers — which allow voters to cast a ballot at any location — and return to a system of precinct-based assigned polling places for Election Day. That decision forced Dallas Democrats to do the same. Voters were still able to cast ballots at countywide sites during early voting. Read Article

Texas: Eastland County’s hand count of Republican primary ballots stretched into Wednesday as residents waited on results | Natalia Contreras/Votebeat

Just after midnight, as Election Day became Wednesday, workers at a polling place in the city of Rising Star called Eastland County election administrator Temi Nichols with a problem. They told Nichols some workers tasked with hand counting the GOP ballots cast at that location had decided to call it quits, she told a reporter afterwards, and she tried to talk those on the phone out of joining them “Please don’t load up and take off,” Nichols said. The workers on the other end of the phone said they weren’t sure how to read the tally sheets the other workers had left behind or fill out the required paperwork, among other things, according to Nichols. They asked her if they could go home and finish counting in the morning. Read Article

Texas: Eastland County Republicans scramble as hand-count of primary ballots looms | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

On Monday, a group of four people spent more than an hour at a table inside a Realtor’s office, hand-counting the results of two races on 100 sample ballots. It was only a week before Tuesday’s primary election, and for this small group, it was their first time practicing to tally votes by hand. They counted in batches of 25 and used different colored markers to keep track of where one counted batch ended and a new one began. They also used laminated tally sheets, which allowed them to erase and remark them if they made any errors. The group twice marked a vote for the wrong candidate, an error that meant they had to go back and start over and correct their laminated sheets. But on Election Day, “you won’t be able to erase the errors on the sheet. That’s why we practice,” said Robin Hayes, the county’s GOP chair, who was training the group. Hayes hasn’t yet participated in an official hand-count herself, but said she’s attended trainings to learn how to do it and has been preparing and training other volunteers for months. Read Article

Texas: Gillespie County Republicans scale back hand-count amid staffing shortage | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

Gillespie County Republicans have scrapped plans to hand-count all of their 2026 primary ballots after failing to recruit enough workers — at least for early voting. The lack of manpower prompted party officials to vote last week to use the county’s voting equipment to tabulate thousands of ballots expected to be cast during the two weeks before Election Day on March 3. However, Gillespie Republicans still plan to hand-count ballots cast on Election Day, party officials told Votebeat. The effort has deepened a divide within the county party: Some members wish to ditch electronic voting equipment entirely and hand-count all ballots, while others trust that the county’s electronic voting equipment is safe and the process contains appropriate checks and balances. It’s a continuation of a long-running disagreement that began in 2024, when the county party first hand-counted primary ballots. Read Article

Texas: SAVE tool keeps mistakenly flagging voters as noncitizens | Jen Fifield and Zach Despart/The Texas Tribune

When county clerk Brianna Lennon got an email in November saying a newly expanded federal system had flagged 74 people on the county’s voter roll as potential noncitizens, she was taken aback. Lennon, who’d run elections in Boone County, Missouri, for seven years, had heard the tool might not be accurate. The flagged voters’ registration paperwork confirmed Lennon’s suspicions. The form for the second person on the list bore the initials of a member of her staff, who’d helped the man register — at his naturalization ceremony. It later turned out more than half the Boone County voters identified as noncitizens were actually citizens. A similar situation has been playing out in Texas, where county clerks have likewise found numerous examples of misidentified voters across the state. Read Article