The Lubbock County Elections Office is currently working through a backlog of more than 7,500 voter registrations after a technical error at the Texas Department of Public Safety led to a flood of updates to process for county elections offices across the state.
A report from Votebeat and the Texas Tribune posted Wednesday evening found that voter registration applications and updates submitted through the DPS’s online driver’s license portal were never sent to county voter registrars.
Lubbock County’s Elections Administrator, Troy Havard, said early on, his office was receiving “sporadic applications” but that changed quickly.
“Once the problem was discovered earlier this month – and the problem has been corrected, is what we've been told – we got an influx of all of those backlogged registrations going all the way back to October of last year,” Harvard said. “Here in Lubbock County, we received over 7,500 of those.”
Other counties, such as Potter County in Amarillo, reported receiving more than 1,450 cases to process. Havard pointed out that this only affected applications that were submitted through the Department of Public Safety and does not affect applications that were mailed in, submitted by hand, or given to voter deputy registrars.
Havard emphasized that this issue will not affect anyone’s ability to vote when early voting for the general election begins on Oct. 19.
“[We] may have still a backlog when early voting starts, but we're working them as quickly as we can, and voters can have full confidence that they will be able to vote no matter what,” Havard said.
The deadline for voter registration is Oct. 5, and Havard said forms can be printed, signed, and mailed in by visiting votetexas.gov, as well as turned in through a voter deputy registrar. Havard also encouraged voters who may have questions about their registration status to call the Lubbock County Elections Office at (806) 775-1339.
“I can't necessarily tell them if their record was involved in that DPS issue, but I can tell them what their current status is in our system, and if they say, ‘Well, I did this back in March of this year through DPS,’ and our system's not showing that, it's not reflecting that change, we'll get to it. I just may not be able to tell you that that's what it is right away,” Havard said.
This comes as election offices across the state prepare for another busy midterm election. Havard officially joined the Lubbock County Elections Office in July, after previous administrator Roxine Stinson announced her retirement following 23 years of serving Lubbock County. Havard served as assistant elections administrator in Tarrant County for about eight years.
Havard said on top of this new backlog, his office is processing the regular applications submitted every year as well as all of the absentee applications that come through requesting absentee ballots, such as federal postcard applications that go to overseas voters and members of the military.
“As a retired Marine, I am particularly interested in making sure that those are taken care of as well, but all of our overseas voters are being taken care of through my office as well,” Havard said. “In addition to that, we are preparing all of the voting equipment, the polling locations, and all of supplies required to make sure that they are distributed to the polling locations and set up so that [by] the first day of early voting on the 19th of October, that everything is in place.”
Havard also encouraged Lubbock County voters to consider signing up to help as poll workers and follow the Lubbock County Elections Office on social media for updates throughout the election season.