As Early Midterm Voting Looms, a Glitch Delays 600,000 Texas Voter Registrations

A computer error caused a backlog of hundreds of thousands of voter registrations in Texas, sending election workers scrambling to process them before early voting starts on Monday, county election officials said.

The backlog of nearly 600,000 applications stemmed from a glitch in software run by the Texas Department of Public Safety, according to a lawsuit filed last week by voting rights groups. They accused the agency, as well as the secretary of state, who serves as Texas’ chief election officer, of failing to to maintain a reliable online voter registration system.

The backlog in a state that is home to one of the year’s most competitive U.S. Senate races raised concerns nationally. Senator Alex Padilla, a Democrat from California and the ranking member of the Senate Rules Committee, which oversees federal elections, issued a letter to Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas and Secretary of State Robert Howden last month demanding an explanation of the scope and cause of the failure.

“Every eligible voter should be able to cast their ballots and have their ballots counted, period,” Mr. Padilla said in an interview.

The backlog appeared to have been mostly cleared by Wednesday, according to county election officials, several of whom said there was little risk that Texans who tried to register would be unable to vote. But some voting advocates said they worried that the episode might discourage voters from turning out at all.

The lawsuit, filed last week in Bexar County, demanded that the error be fixed. It cited previous legal action that resulted in a settlement in 2021 in which Texas agreed with voting rights groups to offer residents the option of online voter registration.