Renee Dominguez/KUT
Hundreds of Fort Bend County voter registrations – together with new functions, cancellations and adjustments – are nonetheless pending.
The backlog comes after the corporate that ran the county’s voter registration system abruptly shut down and the state overhauled its personal voter registration system.
Fort Bend County Elections Administrator John Oldham stated VOTEC – the corporate that produced the software program for the county voter registration system – closed down in August. The county was with no voter registration system for a few month, earlier than negotiating a deal to proceed utilizing VOTEC’s software program for one more 12 months. VOTEC founder and Chairman John Medcalf was not instantly obtainable for remark.
The state additionally overhauled its voter registration system – referred to as the Texas Election Administration Administration system, or TEAM – in July, based on Votebeat and the Texas Tribune. Since then, counties throughout the state have confronted difficulties processing new voter registrations, the information retailers reported.
Civix, TEAM’s developer, couldn’t be reached for remark.
Oldham stated that as of Thursday, Fort Bend County had about 22,000 pending information from the Division of Public Security. These information embrace new voter registrations, cancellations and updates equivalent to deal with adjustments. Oldham stated his workplace is checking the person information for anomalies after seeing points in different counties – together with counties that use totally different voter registration software program.
“As an alternative of updating addresses, it was canceling them,” Oldham stated. “So we’re ready on that.”
The Division of Public Security referred Houston Public Media to the Texas Secretary of State’s workplace for remark. The secretary of state is Texas’ chief election officer.
“Fort Bend is a (sic) certainly one of 24 Texas counties that contracted with VOTEC, which abruptly closed its doorways this summer season, leaving these counties with no functioning voter registration system,” the Texas Secretary of State’s Workplace stated in a press release. “Our employees is working across the clock with affected counties to make sure they’re ready for the November election.”
Oldham stated the county thought of switching to TEAM after VOTEC shut down. After witnessing points in different counties, nonetheless, the county determined to not transfer ahead with TEAM.
“I didn’t wish to take the chance there that we’d be developing on early voting, and we didn’t have a VR (voter registration) system,” Oldham stated.
Nonetheless, Oldham stated he expects that the brand new voters will probably be imported into the county’s system by the point early voting begins this 12 months.
“Our expectation is that by the twentieth of October … that they are going to be, and in the event that they’re not, they may vote provisionally,” he stated. “We’re not going to show individuals away.”
The deadline to register to vote on this 12 months’s election is Oct. 6. Whereas new voters should submit or postmark their functions by the deadline, they won’t be disqualified if the county processes their utility after Oct. 6.
