Why early vote totals in Texas don’t match what counties report

Texas counties reported record turnout during the first week of early voting, including tens of thousands of mail-in ballots. But on Friday, the totals posted on the state elections website did not match those reported by local officials.

In Bexar County, for example, only eight people voted absentee, according to the state website. In fact, according to Michele Carew, the county election administrator, nearly 18,000 people voted by mail.

“We’re not leaving this office until we report the numbers to the state,” she said.

EARLY VOTING FOLLOW-UP: Search by county and see where turnout is highest

State turnout data continues to lag for many large urban counties, particularly for mail-in ballots, an error that local election officials say is linked to the same broken system that caused a massive delay in voter registrations in recent weeks.

In-person voting totals also lag. Election officials in Fort Bend County — one of the most competitive districts in the state — reported more than 75,000 ballots cast in person as of Friday morning, while the state website shows just over 41,000.

Local elections officials said they still have confidence in the state’s election night reporting system, which worked without any glitches or delays during the March primary, but they are frustrated that turnout numbers aren’t being reported accurately.

“It’s not that we didn’t capture the data, it’s just not reflected here,” said Kristin Miles, Bastrop County elections administrator and president of the Texas Association of County Election Officials, referring to the secretary of state’s portal.

Local elections officials said the problem lies with the state’s online voting system, Texas Election Administration Management (TEAM), which was overhauled in July 2025.

In February, they wrote to then-Secretary of State Jane Nelson, noting that “counties face daily challenges with basic TEAM functionality.”

Earlier this month, election officials scrambled to update a backlog of hundreds of thousands of voter registrations that were languishing due to a separate problem at the Department of Public Safety. The glitch-prone TEAM system has made all those registrations more difficult to update, said Sam Taylor, public affairs director for the Texas Association of County Election Officials.

“There is a common denominator here and that is the deployment of the new TEAM system,” he said.

Before the election, county officials were told they would be able to seize voter rolls through the mail in bulk. On Tuesday, Christina Adkins, the secretary of state’s elections director, sent an email to election administrators asking them to manually enter email voter data into the TEAM system, one by one.

“We have determined that the functionality (sic) related to mail-in ballots is not ready for use in this election,” Adkins wrote. “We are aware of the additional workload this places on counties. »

Entering ballots one by one is “extremely tedious for counties,” Miles said. She said updating individual voter records can take anywhere from 30 seconds “on a good day” to more than 10 minutes each.

In Bastrop County, Miles said the TEAM system incorrectly recorded ballots received by mail this week or last time as cast on Nov. 3. The county had to update each record individually to reflect the date actually received.

“The state says, well, you have to go in and fix them manually,” she said. “And as the county elections official, I say we don’t have time for that, do we?”

Alicia Pierce, a spokeswoman for the secretary of state, said Thursday that counties are responsible for uploading their data into the state system and that it is not unusual to see delays from the day before. She said counties are supposed to enter their data by 11 a.m. the next day, but some have been slower in getting information.

“It’s the nature of trying to combine and account for 254 counties,” Pierce said.

Pierce did not respond to a request for comment Friday when asked about the specific TEAM issue reported by county officials.

In interim hearings this summer, lawmakers questioned Adkins about the state’s handling of the TEAM overhaul, and particularly its oversight of Civix, the vendor chosen to manage the state’s voter registration system.

“When I get half a dozen counties with their hair on fire … that means the vendor is behind in providing fixes to the system,” Sen. Paul Bettencourt said at a June hearing. “And these fixes need to be made because if we have an election in November and we can’t claim that we have the integrity of the voter rolls, we’re going to have questions.”

Carew said this week that she didn’t think the TEAM issue would impact election night, although she acknowledged that “it has an impact on voter confidence.” She noted that the county had a plan in place to report vote totals on November 3.

Ben Wermund contributed reporting.