State error in Texas creates huge backlog in voter registration applications as midterm voting nears
County election offices throughout Texas are scrambling to process a massive backlog of voter registration applications stemming from an error at the state level, a headache that is hitting just as they are preparing for voting to begin in the midterm elections.
The problem, which officials in the Republican-controlled state have not publicly defined, also could have disenfranchised people who wanted to vote in the state’s March primary but whose registration applications were never processed, local election officials said during a news conference Wednesday.
Related Knowledge Center: Voting rights
As Republicans move to restrict voting rights, and Donald Trump appears to be preparing for another confrontation about election results, a wide range of organizations are pushing back.
Top guidance in the run-up to Election Day
- Ben Wikler, a political organizer who was chairman of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin from 2019 to 2025 says, “The very most powerful thing you can do as a volunteer in politics is to talk to your actual friends and family who are fence-sitters.”
- He quotes Abraham Lincoln, who wrote in a letter to a campaign committee in 1840: “Keep a constant watch on the doubtful voters, and from time to time have them talked to by those in whom they have the most confidence.”
- The place to put our energy, Wikler says, is on the people whose votes will matter most because they live in a place with high-stakes, very close elections, as well as the people where we live.
- ACLU: Know your voting rights | How the ACLU is safeguarding the election
- Report intimidation, at the polls or elsewhere, immediately to the Election Protection Hotline at 1-866-OUR-VOTE or 1-888-VE-Y-VOTA (en Español).