Tarrant County election officials working through 74,000 voter registration files

Tarrant County election officials plan to finish working through more than 70,000 voter registration files stemming from a Texas Department of Public Safety data error.

Officials expect to finish the review of all pending records by Oct. 2.

What happened

Tarrant County officials learned of a voter data issue from the Department of Public Safety in mid-September and received 74,000 individual files from the department Sept. 23. Tarrant County Elections Administrator Clinton Ludwig said the number of files does not represent a number of new voters as some of the files may be an update to an existing voter registration.

Texas Department of Public Safety officials found a data error where voter registration forms or information updates were not passed from the department to the Secretary of State and then to county officials. The data error covered 590,000 files.

Ludwig said some of the files appear to go back as far as October 2025.

Tarrant County elections staff have been working mandatory overtime and brought in temporary staff to work through the files. Ludwig said about 60,000 files have been processed so far.

What else?

The voter registration deadline for the Nov. 3 election is Oct. 5. Ludwig said voter registrations submitted before the deadline will be processed normally.

Voters can check the status of their registration online.

If a voter shows up and is not in the poll book, they may request a provisional ballot and election staff will verify their eligibility. If they are an eligible voter, the ballot will be counted, Ludwig said.