Texas DPS Failed to Send Voter Registration Records to Counties. Here’s What Texans Need to Know.
Aqua Jones | Updated September 23, 2026
Texas county election offices are receiving a backlog of voter registration records that the Department of Public Safety did not previously transmit from its online driver’s-license services. The discovery comes less than two weeks before October 5, the deadline to register for the November 3 election.
The scale is coming into focus, but one number remains unknown: how many individual voters are affected?
The leader of the Texas Association of County Election Officials told Votebeat that counties are receiving tens of thousands of records. As of Wednesday, Collin County was examining more than 40,000 additional records, while Travis County reported receiving about 32,000 from DPS overnight. Those figures are not counts of newly unregistered voters. Counties must determine which records are new applications, updates to existing registrations or duplicates.
What went wrong?
State officials told county election offices that some transactions through DPS’s online portal produced incomplete voter registration records, preventing those records from being sent to county registrars. The records date back at least to October 2025. DPS said Wednesday that the system issue has been resolved and that it is working with the Secretary of State’s office to supply the missing information. Officials have not publicly identified the original cause, the information that was missing or the exact number of affected voters.
The DPS portal is widely used: about six million people used it for voter registration transactions from 2020 through 2024, according to DPS testimony reported by Votebeat. That is historical usage of the service. It is not the number of records delayed by this error.
County officials now have to process the delayed records while making sure an older DPS record does not replace a voter’s newer information, such as a recent address update. Officials have not established whether the error prevented anyone from voting in the March primary.
Used DPS online services? Check your record.
If you chose the voter registration option while renewing a Texas driver’s license or state ID, or updating an address through DPS online services, check your status through the Texas Secretary of State’s “Am I Registered?” service. Save any confirmation or transaction record you received.
If your registration does not appear, contact your county voter registrar promptly. The Secretary of State says October 5, 2026, is the deadline to register for the November election. Its guidance also explains how to submit an application by that date.
The Secretary of State’s office told Votebeat that a person who registered through DPS before the deadline but is missing from the voter rolls may cast a provisional ballot. Election officials would then check the DPS transaction; if they verify that the person registered, the provisional ballot will be counted. That process depends on verification, so keep your records and ask election officials for instructions if the issue affects you.
No Chill News will follow the final count, county processing and any further explanation from DPS. For now, the most useful step for anyone who used the service is simple: check your status, keep your confirmation and contact your county registrar if something looks wrong.
Sources: Votebeat/Texas Tribune report republished by KERA, Sept. 23, first state email to county officials, Texas voter-status portal
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