County officials are suddenly facing a high volume of online applications, some nearly a year old, linked to a state error.
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HOUSTON — Election offices across Texas’s 254 counties are facing a backlog of online voter-registration applications due to a state error that could affect competitive midterm elections, including the races for U.S. Senate and governor, local officials said.
Republican leaders who control all levers of power in the state have yet to address the scale of the problem or whether it could disenfranchise voters ahead of the midterms, according to a Wednesday statement from the Texas Association of County Election Officials.
“Over the past 24 hours, Texas county voter registrars across the state have received a flood of new voter registrations and updates to voter registration records submitted through the Texas Department of Public Safety. Some of these submissions date as far back as October 2025,” said Chris McGinn, the association’s executive director. “… Counties have received anywhere from several hundred to tens of thousands of records to process.”
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Texas voters have until Oct. 5 to register. Counties have until early in-person voting starts Oct. 19 to process applications.
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