Unprocessed voter registrations are piling up at the Bexar County Elections Department’s office, according to local officials, and the problem is growing worse as October’s early voting approaches.
When the Current last reported on the issue on Sept. 4, Bexar County had already amassed more than 34,000 unprocessed voter registrations, largely a result of the county’s difficulty integrating with the voting system used by the Texas Secretary of State.
Now, the number of unprocessed registration tops 45,000 with more pouring in daily, according to Precinct 4 Commissioner Tommy Calvert.
Bexar County elections officials said they’re in a holding pattern due to the bottleneck with the Texas Secretary of State’s office. Nonetheless, Bexar Elections Administrator Michele Carew said she believes the county will meet its rapidly approaching deadline.
“I’m 100% confident that everybody will be processed and every eligible voter will be in the system come the first day of early voting,” Carew told the Current in a phone interview.
Early voting for November’s election starts Oct. 20, meaning county staff only has four weeks to process tens of thousands of registrations.
Interest in the election is expected to be high due to county propositions on the ballot that would determine the outcome of Project Marvel — including a new Spurs arena — and upgrades to Frost Bank Center and Freeman Coliseum. Voters also will weigh in on 17 proposed amendments to the Texas Constitution.
The problem stems from the county integrating with the voting system used by the Texas Secretary of State, called TEAM, or Texas Elections Administration Management. The state’s system isn’t designed for communities as large as the San Antonio, according to Carew.
Many of the counties already using TEAM have populations of less than 200,000, compared to San Antonio’s 1.5 million. Austin is having similar trouble integrating with the system, Calvert told the Current.
Additionally, the Secretary of State’s system doesn’t have a record of all the streets in San Antonio, meaning voters can’t be placed in their proper precinct, Carew explained. A voter’s precinct determines who they are able to vote for, since local, state and even U.S. Congressional offices break down to precinct-by-precinct representation.
Without being able to place voters in their proper precinct, data input is at a standstill.
Carew said county staff will work around the clock as soon as they gain access to the state’s system so they can clear the massive backlog.
The Elections Department has even hired nine temp workers to assist its six full-time staffers in processing the data. If need be, the county will hire even more, according to Carew.
However, for now, they wait.
At a Sept. 3 Commissioners Court meeting, Calvert advocated for the county to switch over to the only other system permitted by the state, VR Systems. VR is better able to handle the 2 million documents that must be processed for the San Antonio area, the commissioner said.
In accordance with the Texas Election Code, counties must process voter registrations within 30 days of receiving them. However, the current bottleneck means that hasn’t been the case for many would-be Bexar County voters.
Eighteen-year-old Audrey Marie Mattingly-Zuniga told the Current she submitted her first voter registration application in July and still hasn’t heard from the Elections Department on the application’s status.
“It’s frustrating. I’d like to make sure I’m registered in time for the next election,” Mattingly-Zuniga said via text. “My mom is worried because my sister was temporarily suspended right before the last election. She has been checking for all of us a lot since that happened.”
Any county that doesn’t meet the required 30-day turnaround could see its funding reduced by the Texas Secretary of State, according to the Texas Elections Code.
But given that the bottleneck is largely with the Secretary of State, a position held since January by Republican businesswoman Jane Nelson, it’s unclear what penalties Bexar County might incur from its overdue registrations.
However, as Calvert pointed out at the last Commissioners Court meeting, the backlog opens up the county — and the state — to lawsuits from voting rights groups or individual voters who argue that it constitutes wide-scale disenfranchisement.
The mad scramble for Bexar County to integrate with a new voting system stems from the maker of its old one, Votec, going out of business.
Carew told the Current that the county’s contract with the company was set to expire on Aug. 25 anyway, adding that she had no intention to renew due to the system’s lack of responsiveness to service requests.
At the early September Commissioners Court meeting, VR Systems was approved as the county’s replacement.
But, for now, the county has to rely on the Secretary of State’s TEAM system while it waits for VR Systems to be ratified at the next Commissioners Court meeting on Oct. 14 — less than a week before early voting starts.
And even after VR Systems is ratified, it still may take months for it become fully operational.
Carew, who started in January, said she contacted the Secretary of State within her first 30 days to inquire about joining the state system. Upon learning of its limitations for larger counties, she began pushing instead for a move over to VR Systems earlier this summer.
“Had the Commissioner’s Court acted upon the recommendation of the elections administrator in June or July when she requested, we could have had VR running in September or October, but now it’s December before VR will be active,” Calvert said.
Part of the holdup was the cost. VR Systems will cost the county more than $1 million.
Members of Commissioners Court also questioned whether the county could just join the statewide TEAM system — something Republican Precinct 3 Commissioner Grant Moody pushed for. Moody was the sole no vote on adopting VR Systems.
Calvert shared a video to his social media Friday in which he walked viewers through the Elections Department’s backlog. In the clip, he highlighted the Current’s prior coverage.
From the time the video was produced to when it was published a week later, an additional 10,000 applications came in via the Department of Public Safety and mail-in voter registration applications, Calvert said.
The rising rate of new voter registrations suggests the problem could grow exponentially worse.
“So, if I extrapolate that all the way to the next Commissioners Court meeting, which is Oct. 14, you could potentially have [80,000 or] 90,000 voter registrations to work through if the state’s not working,” Calvert added.
Potentially worsening the backlog, Sept. 16 was National Voter Registration Day, an annual event in which activist groups register as many voters as possible and submit the applications to their respective counties.
“All rights derive from voting rights,” Calvert said. “And if we don’t protect people’s right to vote, we lose the democracy.”
He continued: “We have, as a court, decided that the choice of these investments in the Coliseum and the rodeo and the arena for the Spurs is in the hands of the people. So we want to ensure that — at least I want to ensure that — everybody can vote regardless of what their opinion is.”
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