Monday is last day to register to vote in Texas

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(The Center Square) – Monday is the last day to register to vote in Texas for the Nov. 3 General Election. 

“Election officials say registering to vote, or confirming an existing registration, is the first step toward a smooth voting experience this fall,” Texas Secretary of State Robert Howden said in a statement. “If you are qualified to vote but have not yet registered, or if you have moved or since you last voted, now is the time to act.”

To register to vote, Texas voters must be at least 18 by Election Day, a U.S. citizen and a resident in your county of registration. 

Texans can find a registration application, check their current registration status, or update the county where they are registering at VoteTexas.gov. Mailed voter registration applications must be postmarked on or before Oct. 5. Those with questions are encouraged to call 1-800-252-VOTE.

Early voting begins Oct. 19 and goes through Oct. 30.

Howden’s statement reminding Texans to register to vote did not address a backlog of registration applications that the state and counties have been grappling with for months. 

At least 178,000 voter registration applications never reached county election offices due to a Texas Department of Public Safety database error. Overall, there’s been a 500,000 application backlog, according to a Dallas Morning News tracker.

According to VoteBeat, Texas DPS knew of problems with Texas’ online voter registration portal as early as March. According to public records, DPS acknowledged then that a new software program prevented nearly 1,000 voter registration applications and updates from being submitted through its web portal between December and February, the outlet reported. The outlet has been reporting on which counties have been receiving tens of thousands of unprocessed voter registration applications due to the error.

The SOS, Texas DPS and state lawmakers have acknowledged that problems stem from implementing a new voter registration management system, referred to as TEAM. After a system overhaul was launched July 2025, as early as last October is when voter registration information wasn’t sent to counties, state Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, said. 

Bettencourt said he and others were working to ensure that they were included by counties by the Monday deadline. He said he started asking oversight questions about the issue in June, as county election officials were putting in the long hours into updating voter registration rolls to deal with the error and a massive backlog.

“In typical unintended IT upgrade consequences, the DPS vendor Deloitte updated the voter registration system, and those automatic transfers stopped coming thru, and before you ask, YES, the Texas Secretary of State personnel should have also caught the lack of Voter Registrations, but they didn't,” Bettencourt said. 

The Secretary of State’s Office did not respond to requests for comment. Texas DPS has said the error has been fixed.

“On the positive side, the missing files were pushed through to the counties that update their voter rolls, and in bipartisan unanimity are working on getting their rolls updated by Oct 5th,” Bettencourt said. He also said the SOS “is helping with the backlog by getting monies for the counties if needed” and the counties were working on the voter registration backlog. The counties were also having issues with the new TEAM system and its vendor, Civix, Bettencourt added. 

In Harris County, where the largest number of voters are registered, County Registrar Annette Ramirez said the voter rolls will be updated in time.  

Texas Democrats have taken issue with the glitch, calling for transparency. 

“The timing of this latest ‘error’ is deeply concerning. With Texas Democrats increasingly leading in races across the state and polls showing a genuinely competitive November election, Texans deserve to know exactly how and why voter registration applications were left unprocessed until less than two weeks before the registration deadline,” Texas Democratic Party Executive Director Terri Burke said. 

“This is not the first warning sign,” he added. “The Secretary of State’s voter registration system has faced documented problems for months, including failures affecting voter searches and election reports. Now, we are learning that an unknown number of voter registration applications were never sent to county officials because of incomplete records. At a minimum, the Secretary of State and DPS must immediately disclose how many voters were affected, when the failure began, why it happened, and what safeguards are being put in place to ensure it cannot happen again.”

Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, state Rep. James Talarico said, “This is what a broken, corrupt political system looks like: Texans follow the rules, register to vote before the deadline, and still risk losing their God-given right to the ballot box because their government failed to do its job.”

He also encouraged every Texan to check their voter registration online by the deadline.