Voting rights groups sue Texas over glitch that delayed nearly 600,000 voter registrations
A lawsuit says a software update at the Texas Department of Public Safety left new registrations unprocessed, The New Republic reported.
Two voting rights groups have sued Texas officials after a computer glitch delayed the voter registrations of nearly 600,000 people, according to The New Republic. This story is based on that single report.
The lawsuit was filed by the League of Women Voters Texas and Move Texas Civic Fund. It alleges that a software update started by the Texas Department of Public Safety malfunctioned, leaving 600,000 new voters unprocessed, The New Republic reported. The groups also claim the voter registration program had problems for a long time before the malfunction.
The defendants are Republican Secretary of State Robert S. Howden, the Department of Public Safety and DPS Director Freeman F. Martin, according to the report.
The lawsuit says the people affected registered to vote while applying for a driver's license between October 2025 and February 2026, and that their information was never recorded. The groups are asking a judge to activate a 2021 settlement agreement that allows Texans to register to vote online with a driver's license.
“"Since at least October 2025, Defendants have breached and continue to breach the contract by failing to maintain the procedures that ensure simultaneous online voter registration with driver license renewal or change of address transactions."”the lawsuit, as quoted by The New Republic
The New Republic reported that state election workers are rushing to register the affected people before early voting begins on Monday.
The timing matters because of the stakes in Texas this year. The New Republic described the state's U.S. Senate race between Republican Ken Paxton and Democrat James Talarico as very close, and said a Democrat has a real chance to win a Senate seat there for the first time in over 30 years. In the outlet's view, if the registration problem is not fixed by November 3, any outcome could face real questions about its legitimacy.
Several things remain unclear from the report. It does not say which court the lawsuit was filed in or when, and it does not include any response from the Secretary of State's office or the Department of Public Safety. It also does not say how many of the affected registrations have been processed so far, whether all of them can be completed before early voting starts, or what the software update was meant to do.
