Early voting begins Monday in Texas with a record 19 million registered voters, even after a series of technology failures left counties processing thousands of delayed or corrected voter records just days before the election. Figures released Friday by the Texas Secretary of State show 19,041,684 registered voters ahead of the November 3 election. That's an increase of 553,518, or about 3 percent, from last November.
Texas, which has a population of around 32 million, has become a battleground state, despite not having elected a Democrat to a statewide office since 1994. Three-term Republican Governor Greg Abbott is in a tight race with Democratic challenger Gina Hinojosa, and there's a razor-thin margin in the Senate contest between Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Democratic challenger James Talarico. Harris County, where Houston is located, received about 1,400 records on October 15 associated with a glitch with updating records on Texas.gov, followed by two more batches the next day to bring the total to more than 2,400, county Tax Assessor-Collector and Voter Registrar Annette Ramirez said in a statement to Newsweek.
The county processed all the records by Friday but asked the Secretary of State to confirm whether every affected Harris County record had been transmitted. It was still awaiting an answer at the time of the statement. The county stressed that the Texas.gov problem was separate from the earlier DPS backlog.
The newer problem specifically affected people who were already registered and used Texas.gov to change a name or address. It should not be treated as 15,000 new voter-registration applications. Initial estimates from the Texas Association of County Election Officials identified approximately 3,000 affected records in Bexar County, 1,100 in Travis County, 700 in Williamson County and 400 in Hays County.
The latest episode came on the heels of a 500,000-record backlog that officials discovered in September. A glitch prevented complete voter-registration records from being transmitted to county registrars. The record electorate arrives after counties contended with two separate technology problems involving Texas voter records.
An earlier error involving online transactions through the Texas Department of Public Safety delayed more than 500,000 voter-registration records and updates, some dating to October 2025. Harris County said it received more than 75,000 records from that backlog beginning September 22. More than 50 staff members worked to review and process the records by October 3, just two days ahead of the state's registration deadline, according to the county.
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