Bexar County officials on Monday said the county now has access to the state’s voter registration system and is poised to complete 75% to 80% of its unprocessed voter registrations by the end of this week.
Bexar County Judge Peter Sakai and Elections Administrator Michele Carew appeared at an afternoon press conference to assure the public that all of the county’s 52,000 unprocessed voter registrations will be completed in time for October’s Early Voting now that county elections staff has access to the Secretary of State’s TEAM system.
“As of this past weekend, Bexar County has gone live with the Secretary of State TEAM system,” Sakai said. “Bexar County, together with the Secretary of State, is moving decisively to ensure that every eligible Bexar County resident who submits a timely registration application will be able to vote this November.”
Bexar County elections staff had been in a holding pattern while the voter registration applications continued to pile up. County personnel had been unable to process voter registrations since as far back as July 2, according to Carew. But the wait is finally over.
“My team has been working all day kickstarting the backlog of applications, and it’s going very well,” she said.
Most of those backlogged applications come from the Department of Public Safety, Carew said. That means they’re digital records already in the TEAM system, which only require Bexar County staff to verify each voter’s information to process. Each of those records could take anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes, Carew added.
“Based on the rate we’ve been able to process, we’re looking at being successful this week, and being able to process 75% to 80% by the end of this week,” she added.
The backlog was further compounded by the county’s prior voter registration system, Votech, going out of business in August. Carew had already decided not to renew the contract, however, which was scheduled to expire in August.
Though County Commissioners approved implementation of VR Systems, which Carew says is better equipped to handle a city of San Antonio’s size, she said it could take up to 6 months for the new system to be fully operational.
In the meantime, the county has decided to use the Secretary of State’s statewide system, TEAM, as a stop-gap solution. However, that decision further extended the wait time for processing the backlog due to the massive amount of data that had to be imported into a system that typically handles counties with populations of 200,000 or fewer.
The Secretary of State’s TEAM system initially had no record of the streets in Bexar County, meaning voters couldn’t be placed in their appropriate precincts. This meant that Bexar County elections staff and the eight temp workers brought on to handle the backlog were stuck in a holding pattern.
Though Carew had advocated for the county to switch over to VR Systems since July, the Commissioners Court took until September to agree to implement the new system. During Monday’s press conference, Sakai said the hesitation was due in part to questions whether the TEAM system could sufficiently meet the county’s needs.
The other sticking point was the price tag of more than $1 million to implement VR. That’s after Votech repeatedly asked the county to help bail it out, Sakai said. The company had been threatening to go out of business for more than a year.
“I have put on record that we have provided additional moneys to them in order for them to fulfill their contractual duties,” Sakai added. “As we’ve noted, they were not able to do that, which then put us in a position of finding another vendor.”
Sakai said there will be an additional conversation with county attorneys over whether there was a potential “breach of contract” on Votech’s end.
The judge also said the substantial amount already invested in Votech and the company’s subsequent requests for emergency funds led the commissioners to have concerns about committing to the same level of investment in a new system.
“It’s a significant amount of money that we had already invested in Votech,” Sakai said. “So we wanted to make sure we weren’t jumping from one system to another system that wouldn’t be able to do what we expect it to do.”
Counties can incur penalties for failing to meet the required 30-day window to process voter registrations, which can include reduced funding from the Secretary of State’s office, according to the Texas Election Code.
However, at the press conference, Carew said the Secretary of State’s office has assured her that it has no plans to penalize counties experiencing delays in processing voter registrations, especially because the delay is partially a result of data importation issues on the state’s end.
Even though Bexar County has begun working through its registration backlog, voters and voting rights groups still could sue the county or the Secretary of State over the delay.
When asked about some voters’ fears that the delay was part of a widespread suppression effort, Sakai said county elections staff and the Secretary of State have been working “hand in hand” to get Bexar County integrated with the statewide system.
Carew and Sakai said voters can rest assured the backlog will be addressed in time for Early Voting, which begins Oct. 20 for the Nov. 4 election. In that cycle, funding for a new Spurs arena will be on the ballot, in addition to improvements to Freeman Coliseum and 17 amendments to the Texas Constitution.
In the meantime, Carew said voters can check their status at VoteTexas.gov.
Mail-in voter registration applications sent on or before the Oct. 6 registration deadline will be honored for the upcoming election as usual, Sakai insisted.
“In simple terms, if you apply on time and you are eligible, your application will be processed,” he said.
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