Like in many states, Texans can register to vote or update their registration when renewing their driver’s license or getting a new one.

But the state of Texas has blamed a software glitch related to this system for more than half a million voter registration delays. The extensive backlog of voting registration applications, which reportedly began to accumulate a year ago, is now the subject of a lawsuit filed by a pair of voter advocacy groups: the League of Women Voters Texas and MOVE Texas Civic Fund. The state says it has already fixed the issue and filed the applications.

The suit characterizes the delay as part of a pattern of voter suppression that has disenfranchised voters in Texas. Filed in Bexar County, Texas, the lawsuit names Texas Secretary of State Robert S. Howden and his office, as well as the Department of Public Safety and its director Freeman F. Martin.

Meanwhile, the office of the Texas Secretary of State told media this week that the delayed applications were filed to voters’ home districts and that the problem has been fixed. As a safeguard, a spokesperson for the secretary of state said anyone still affected by the problem will be able to file a provisional ballot. But according to a report from The Texas Tribune, county officials have found another system error has caused issues with another 15,000 registrations over the last month.

Now, counties are scrambling to fix those issues ahead of the start of early voting in the state on Oct. 19 for a high-profile midterm election season that has put the state in the national spotlight. Chris McGinn, executive director of the Texas Association of County Election Officials, told the Tribune, “Just when most counties were seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, another unexpected backlog is being dropped on county voter registrars.”

Representatives from the secretary of state and DPS office did not immediately return a request for comment.

Heated election season, unanswered questions

The state has not given details on what kind of technical problem caused the voter registration backlog in the first place. At first, it was attributed to a “computer glitch,” but subsequent reports have the secretary of state’s office describing it as a programming error arriving in a software update to the DPS driver’s license online portal.

The registration problems come five years after voting groups won a suit against the state that forced it to comply with the National Voter Registration Act, which guarantees the right to register to vote while updating a driver’s license online.

The new suit claims the registration delays are a violation of those safeguards.

Texas has for years been a reliably red state, but polls put several Republican candidates up for election this year behind Democratic challengers, most notably a US Senate race between Attorney General Ken Paxton and State Representative James Talarico.

That race in particular has become so hotly contested that the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, has spent nearly $160 million to back Republican candidates in the state. The vast amount of money spent on the Texas races and the unpredictability of the outcomes is drawing more scrutiny to potential voter suppression in the state.

Omar Gallaga has covered technology, digital culture and other topics for outlets including CNET, NPR, Wired, Texas Monthly, MSNBC, Consumer Reports, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic and the Austin American-Statesman, where he was a longtime tech reporter, editor and podcaster. He lives in the Texas Hill Country.

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