Error leads to backlog of tens of thousands of voter registration applications in Texas - NBC News

The Texas secretary of state's office told election officials last week that a glitch in the Department of Public Safety's system had been quietly failing for a while. Certain incomplete applications, ones missing some piece of information, never got forwarded to county election officials at all. That includes the offices here in Lubbock County that process local voter rolls, along with every other county in the state. State officials started sending the backlog out this week, but the fix comes uncomfortably close to registration deadlines for the midterms.

The real risk is people who think they're registered and aren't, or whose voter file is out of date because their application sat in limbo instead of reaching the county. Nobody knows exactly how many Texans got caught in this until Votebeat, a nonprofit news outlet, broke the story. County offices statewide are now working through the backlog under a tight clock, trying to sort out who's actually on the rolls before ballots go out.

If you registered or updated your registration recently and haven't heard back, it might be worth checking with the Lubbock County elections office directly instead of assuming everything went through.