45,000 voter registrations at risk as Bexar County switches to new state election system

SAN ANTONIO — Bexar County election officials are scrambling to process roughly 45,000 voter registration applications stuck in limbo just weeks before the November election, blaming delays on a state computer system that is not yet fully operational.

In a video with Precinct 4 Commissioner Tommy Calvert, Bexar County Elections Department Manager La Tonia Burton said the office continues to receive “mail coming in daily that we cannot process because we don’t have a voter registration system. So we are in a flux, if you will.”

The bottleneck began when Votec, the county’s longtime voter registration vendor, abruptly shut down. It’s one of only three companies certified to manage voter registration data in Texas, according to the Texas Tribune.

Bexar County must now rely on the state’s Texas Election Administration Management System, or TEAMS, which still lacks key street index files needed to assign voters to the correct precincts.

“Because TEAMS or the state does not have all of our street indexes or our files, we cannot effectively process and put the voter in the correct precinct which gives them their districts and who they are to vote for, their representatives,” Burton said.

Emails obtained by the county show similar complaints from other Texas county elections administrators, including website freezes, incorrect data printing and display errors, leaving some election workers describing themselves as “sitting ducks” waiting for state assistance.

Alicia Pierce, Assistant Secretary of State for communications, acknowledged the challenges statewide.

“This is an unprecedented situation. This vendor abruptly shut off their services, disrupting the voter registration functions of 23 Texas counties,” Pierce said. “Of those, 14 have requested to join the TEAM system, and we are working as diligently as possible to onboard those counties ahead of the November election. At the same time, we are trying to support our 230 counties who are in the process of migrating to the Team 2.0 system.”

Carew pushed back on criticism that she failed to alert leaders sooner. She said she has been briefing the Commissioners Court on the issue for at least six weeks and that “it literally kind of avalanched.

Carew explained that the county continued to use Votec until the vendor abruptly closed its doors. Anticipating trouble, she says she proactively spoke with the county manager and the district attorney’s office when she learned Votec might shut down, asking, “What do we do? We need to look into a new voter registration system.”

The transition “idled a little bit,” she said. After notifying Votec that the county planned to switch vendors, the company announced it was closing.

Carew added that she expects data validation within the next day or so. Once confirmed, Bexar County will be cleared to go live on TEAMS, allowing staff to log on and begin processing applications.

Commissioner Calvert said the Texas Secretary of State needs more pressure to fix the system.

“We really have tens of thousands of voters that could be disenfranchised if they don’t get their act together,” Calvert said, calling a failure to resolve the issue “colossal.”

To avoid a potential backlog, Bexar County Elections Administrator, Michele Carew, suggested commissioners hire VR Solutions, a private vendor with a proposed $1+ million contract. Negotiations are ongoing. 

Calvert believes VR Solutions could start inputting voter registration data as soon as the Elections Administrator or County Judge signs the contract, with the Commissioners Court able to ratify it later in October. 

“If the Commissioners Court had listened to the recommendation of the elections administrator in June, July, when she said she needs this on the court, we would have had a private sector vendor called VR Solutions in place for September, October,” Calvert said.

“Because the court wanted to do additional due diligence and question the cost and all these things, now we’re looking at December — maybe later. That was a real mistake.”

He added that the county and the state are already liable under Texas law, saying, “Currently, the county and the state are liable under Texas law. We’re in violation of the 30-day rule that we’re supposed to have voter registrations given once that application is clear.”

Calvert warned that each week of delay adds about 10,000 new registrations, potentially pushing the backlog to 80,000–90,000 by mid-October. The deadline to register to vote is October 6.

Precinct 4 Commissioner Grant Moody, however, remains confident the state system will perform.

“I’m confident the TEAMS system will work and will be able to get us through the November election,” Moody said, noting that 235 of Texas’s 254 counties already use TEAMS. 

Moody said he spoke with the director of elections at the Secretary of State’s Office today and was assured that the state is working quickly to bring Bexar County fully online. After the November election, he added, it will be time to evaluate TEAMS for any issues or gaps—an assessment that will help determine whether an investment in VR Solutions is worthwhile.

“There’s been a lot of improvements. There’s a lot of new counties that have joined TEAMS. Bexar is just the last one in that process. We were slow to get in and try to implement the system and I think that’s put us behind the power curve a little bit,” Moody said.

“Because we’ve never used it, we don’t know all the capabilities,” he added. “Once we know that, then we can have a conversation about VR [Solutions].”

To catch up, the county has hired nine temporary workers, adding to its six-person staff, to begin inputting data once TEAMS is fully live—a step officials expect “within the next couple of days.” Carew said she is “100 percent confident” the backlog will be cleared before early voting begins.

Bexar County voters will decide in November on 17 state constitutional amendments, a proposed new Spurs arena, and upgrades to the Freeman Coliseum and Frost Bank Center.

Early voting runs October 20 through October 31. Election day is November 4.