Texas voter registration tops 19 million, a record before the midterms

More than 19 million Texans are registered to vote ahead of the Nov. 3 midterm elections, a record and 7.7% more than in 2022, according to the Texas Secretary of State. The surge comes despite software errors that left hundreds of thousands of applications unprocessed.

Texas voter registration has climbed to a record of more than 19 million ahead of the Nov. 3 midterm elections, the Texas Secretary of State's office said. The total is 2.2% higher than for the November 2024 general election, 2% higher than in the March primaries and 7.7% above the last midterms in 2022, The Texas Tribune reported.

Fast-growing suburban counties posted some of the largest gains since 2022, led by Kaufman County with 27% more registered voters, followed by Waller (23%), Ellis (21%) and Hays (21%). State figures showed Tarrant County, considered a swing county, with 32,503 fewer voters than four years ago, but county officials said the state's numbers were wrong and that their own dashboard shows 131,418 more voters than the state reported. A spokesperson for the Secretary of State said the office is looking into the discrepancy.

A bilingual "Vote Here" sign at a Texas polling place

Backlogs and errors

The record comes despite problems that threatened registrations across the state. Officials spent the past month clearing about 500,000 applications that a software error in the Texas Department of Public Safety's web portal had failed to send to counties; the state said Wednesday that backlog had been resolved. A separate error affecting address changes made through Texas.gov between Sept. 1 and last week left several thousand more records for counties including Bexar, Travis, Williamson and Hays to process.

Registrations postmarked or submitted to the Department of Public Safety by Oct. 5 will be considered valid, and those voters can still cast a provisional ballot. Turnout in the March primaries also rose, with nearly a quarter of registered voters casting ballots, a sign of heightened interest in this year's midterms.

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