Montgomery County voters who changed their name or address online since Sept. 1 should check their voter registration before early voting opens Monday, Oct. 19.
A state software error trapped about 15,000 voter registration updates statewide and delayed them from reaching county election offices, the Texas Tribune reported Friday, Oct. 16. The error affected address changes submitted through the state's Texas.gov website between Sept. 1 and roughly the second week of October.
County officials learned of the problem Thursday, Oct. 15, just four days before early voting begins. Alicia Pierce, spokesperson for the Texas Secretary of State's Office, said the 15,000 affected records were sent to counties. Not all counties were affected.
The address-update glitch is the second registration error to affect Texas in recent weeks. A separate problem in the Texas Department of Public Safety's online driver's license portal left more than 500,000 records unprocessed for over a year. Votebeat, which first reported the problem in September, said the records dated back to October 2025.
That larger backlog has been cleared. Both the Secretary of State's Office and the Texas Association of County Election Officials (TACEO) confirmed the resolution Wednesday, Oct. 14.
Montgomery County alone had nearly 35,000 records to process from the first backlog, Woodlands Online reported in September.
"Just when most counties were seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, another unexpected backlog is being dropped on county voter registrars," said Chris McGinn, TACEO executive director, according to the Texas Tribune.
Some of the newly released records were missing necessary address information, McGinn said. The Secretary of State's Office said its vendor, Civix, which runs the state's voter registration system known as TEAM, reran all files from Sept. 1 forward to identify affected voters.
Christina Adkins, the state's elections director, said in an Oct. 15 email to county officials that not all counties had affected registrations. She added that "many counties will not see any increase to their Texas Online registrations at this time," according to the Texas Tribune.
Whether Montgomery County received records from this second batch is not clear from available reporting.
Voting rights groups have sued the state over the registration failures. The League of Women Voters of Texas and MOVE Texas Civic Fund filed suit in Bexar County district court, according to Votebeat. The groups asked a judge to order DPS and the Secretary of State's Office to maintain a functioning registration process.
Pierce said voters who registered through the DPS portal but do not appear on the voter roll can cast a provisional ballot. Election officials will verify the transaction with DPS, and if the registration is confirmed, the vote will count.
Residents can verify their registration at VoteTexas.gov. Montgomery County questions can be directed to the county elections office at 936-539-7843 or at elections.mctx.org.
Two Woodlands-area early voting locations are open for the Nov. 3 general election: the George and Cynthia Woods Mitchell Library at 8125 Ashlane Way and the Kevin Brady Library and Community Center at 2250 Buckthorne Place, according to Montgomery County Elections. Hours are 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Oct. 19–23, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Oct. 24 and Oct. 26–30, and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Oct. 25.
