Texas Democrats Demand Emergency Hearing as Voter Registration Crisis Deepens

1 day ago

2 min read

DALLAS, TX — Texas voters and local election officials deserve better. A new report shows that the state’s voter registration crisis is even worse than previously understood: county election officials are now saying the state’s own system, known as TEAM and administered by the Secretary of State’s office is making it harder to process the massive backlog created by a separate failure at the Department of Public Safety. The reporting by Votebeat and The Texas Tribune exposes the growing consequences of failures that jeopardize an efficient and fair Election Day.

“For nine months, the Texas Democratic Party has been sounding the alarm that TEAM is badly broken, making it unreliable and creating unnecessary problems for the people responsible for running our elections. We have been patient and tried to work with the Secretary of State’s Office, but these problems remain. Our TDP staff has manually pulled voter files directly from counties to ensure candidates and organizations working to get-out-the-vote have accurate information, while county election officials are being overwhelmed by a DPS backlog that they did not create. This is not a problem affecting one county or one corner of Texas. Officials across the state are spending taxpayer dollars and countless hours working around failures in a system they are required to use every day. And with early voting beginning October 19, the time for excuses is over.” said Kendall Scudder, Chair of the Texas Democratic Party.

In addition to fixing the system, voters and taxpayers have a right to expect:

The Texas House Elections Committee to immediately convene an emergency hearing to determine what went wrong, what state officials knew, when they knew it, and why Texas continues to rely on a platform that election officials say has fundamental systemic problems.
The Secretary of State gives an explanation of its relationship with Civix, the vendor behind TEAM. Texas has committed $17 million to Civix, the operator of a deeply flawed system, with the contract potentially reaching $36 million if renewed.
That the Secretary of State demanded Civix fix the system before early voting starts.
That the state is pursuing contractual or legal remedies.
Their counties are compensated for working nights and weekends, creating spreadsheets and devising their own workarounds just to perform basic election administration.
To know when voters and taxpayers will finally get a system that works that will provide a seamless, reliable experience at the polls?