Texas Admits Its Voter Registration System Has Fallen Short. An Outside Audit Will Ask Whether It Can Be Saved

Texas got through Tuesday's election without major problems for voters, according to Votebeat and The Texas Tribune. Now the state is admitting the computer system behind every voter roll in Texas has not worked the way it should, and it is seeking an independent audit to assess whether the system can be saved.

The system is TEAM, the Texas Election Administration Management system. It is the statewide voter registration database, and it also runs election management for many county offices. The Secretary of State's office announced working groups of county officials to help fix it, and Votebeat and The Texas Tribune reported that the state has also asked for proposals for an independent audit.

What the state is doing

In a Nov. 5 news release from the Secretary of State, Secretary Robert Howden said the working groups will be made up of county election and registration officials and their staff, and will help "prioritize functionality" as the system is redeveloped.

"We have now conducted multiple successful statewide elections using the updated system, and we have learned a great deal," Howden said. "Without a major statewide election on the horizon, we now have an opportunity to upgrade and improve the functionality of the system with direct feedback from users."

The state's own audit request is blunter. "Continued areas of concern pose a direct risk to election officials' ability to meet … legal obligations for statewide election administration in an efficient manner," reads the request for proposals the state posted Wednesday, according to the Tribune.

Christina Adkins, director of the Secretary of State's elections division, laid out the details in an email to county officials Friday that Votebeat obtained. According to that report:

• The independent audit "will evaluate the system itself, including assessing the completeness and functionality of the modules delivered, an assessment of user needs, and a determination of the long-term salvageability of the current system."

• The audit is expected to begin in December so results are ready for the 2027 legislative session.

• Working groups are expected to start meeting in December and January. They will include county election administrators, county and district clerks and tax assessor-collectors. Officials with Civix, the Louisiana-based vendor that designed and built the system, will also take part.

• The state says it has created a new ticketing system to let counties track progress on problems they report, something county officials have long requested.

What went wrong

The updated TEAM system went live in July 2025. County officials began reporting problems from the start, the Tribune reported. Multiple election officials told Votebeat the system is slow, quits unexpectedly and does not let them process voter registration records efficiently.

The examples are ordinary, and that is the point. Officials said the system will not let them sort records by the date they were submitted. It will not let them select a batch of mail-in ballot records and mark them sent or received; they have to mark them one at a time. Some offices built their own workarounds just to keep up.

The state has pointed to circumstances outside its control. Its release says that when a third-party elections vendor went out of business in summer 2025, the state had to bring 11 counties onto TEAM in a matter of weeks, a process that normally takes months. It also says mid-decade redistricting forced more than 70 counties to redraw local precinct lines, which paused redevelopment of the system.

County officials told Votebeat the problems went beyond those explanations. They said the system made it harder to handle other hurdles, including two state-created backlogs of thousands of voter registration records they had to clear with little time before Election Day.

Counties carried the load

Kristin Miles, president of the Texas Association of County Election Officials and elections administrator in Bastrop County, welcomed the move. "County election officials carried the weight of TEAM's unresolved issues through every election this year, and we are glad to see the Secretary of State taking appropriate steps to address them for the benefit of all Texas voters," Miles said in a statement quoted by the Tribune. "TACEO will be watching closely to make sure these commitments are carried out in full, on schedule, and with genuine county input."

The Tribune reported that at least 9 million Texans voted Tuesday. Its reporting describes county workers overcoming system problems to conduct a smooth election.

Why it matters

Conservatives have spent years asking for clean voter rolls and trustworthy elections, and rightly so. Accurate rolls are the foundation of both. A database that will not sort by date or batch-process ballots is not a partisan problem. It is a stewardship problem. Taxpayers paid for a system meant to serve the people who keep our elections honest, and those people say it has made their jobs harder.

Credit is due where it is earned. The state is now seeking county input, saying it has created a way to track complaints and seeking an outside audit of whether the system can be saved. That is the right order: admit the problem, measure it, then fix it. Luke 16:10 teaches that whoever is faithful in little is faithful in much. Getting the small, daily work of an election office right is part of keeping faith with voters.

For a separate example of state technology oversight, see our coverage of an audit of aging public-safety systems: State Audit: Every Reported 911 Outage Last Year Came From the Legacy System Texas Still Pays to Run.

The next test is whether the audit starts in December and produces results in time for the 2027 legislative session, as officials expect. Texans should get a straight answer on whether TEAM can be fixed, what it would cost and who would pay.