By Rita Cook
Correspondent
Texas Metro News
AUSTIN — This is not your usual partisan election story.
It is really a story about government competence.
Let’s begin with one simple fact: Texas is heading into an enormous election in November. And I think most Texans, regardless of political party, would agree on something rather basic: the machinery of voting ought to work.
Registration. Records. Addresses. Voter rolls. Precincts.
So here we go.
State lawmakers are currently examining Texas’ voter-registration system, after county election officials raised concerns about the state’s voter-registration technology.
At an Aug. 3 House Elections Committee hearing, lawmakers examined the different systems used by Texas counties, including counties operating offline. They discussed problems created when multiple systems have to communicate with one another.
At the center of the discussion is TEAM — the Texas Election Administration Management system — redesigned and relaunched last summer.
And apparently, it wasn’t quite ready for prime time.
Election officials have reported problems with voter-registration lookups, precinct assignments and generating reports of registered voters and mail-ballot voters. Some counties have reportedly resorted to their own spreadsheets when TEAM doesn’t produce the information they need.
TEAM was developed by Louisiana-based Civix under a state contract worth approximately $17 million. Almost all 254 Texas counties use TEAM for election planning and voter-roll maintenance, while counties using other systems still must synchronize information with TEAM for voter identity and eligibility verification.
And let’s be clear: when Texans walk into a polling place, they shouldn’t have to wonder whether the government’s computer system knows who they are or where they are supposed to vote.
We can launch rockets. We can build semiconductor plants. We can put artificial intelligence into everything from our cars to our refrigerators.
Surely, we can build a voter-registration system that works.
Republicans’ concern centers largely on election security and noncitizen voting.
In June, state Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, pressed the Secretary of State’s office for assurances that TEAM problems would be fixed before November.
“Those fixes have to be done, because if we go into a November election and we don’t, we can’t claim that we have integrity in the voter roll,” Bettencourt said.
Democrats, meanwhile, have raised a different concern: Don’t confuse a database problem with voter fraud.
State Rep. Mihaela Plesa, D-Dallas, told lawmakers, “We do not want people who are non-citizens registering, voting; we want to make sure we have safe and secure elections, right?”
And therein lies the problem.
Both things can be true.
The state reportedly flagged more than 2,700 people as possible noncitizens on Texas voter rolls. Yet subsequent reporting found that hundreds of people on that list were able to demonstrate they were citizens.
That is precisely why databases require human verification.
Christina Adkins, director of elections for the Secretary of State’s office, told lawmakers the state is working through TEAM’s problems but could not promise a definitive completion date.
“With technology, I can’t always give people a definitive date when we’re working through a problem or working through a challenge,” she said.
The goal, she added, is “to have a system that our counties want to utilize.”
Well, I would hope so.
And this isn’t a brand-new problem.
In October 2025, six Democratic state representatives asked then-Secretary of State Jane Nelson to delay the TEAM rollout because of problems reported by counties.
Nelson’s office said it anticipated technical problems because more than 20 million records were being migrated and extensive county training was required.
So here we are.
Election integrity isn’t simply about keeping the wrong person off the voter rolls.
It is also about making sure the right person is on the right roll, in the right precinct, with the right information — and that the government computer knows it.
Who tested TEAM across 254 counties?
That isn’t a Republican question.
It isn’t a Democratic question.
It is a taxpayer question.
And with November approaching, Texas doesn’t need another argument about whether voters should trust the system. It needs to make sure the system deserves their trust.
Rita Cook is a world traveler and writer/editor who specializes in writing on travel, auto, crime and politics. A correspondent for Texas Metro News, she has published 11 books and has also produced low-budget films.
