Brazos County's elections office is asking commissioners for permission to seek $10,000 from the state to cover overtime its voter registration staff worked on roughly 4,300 applications that arrived late because of a problem in the Texas Department of Public Safety's online system.
The request is on the regular agenda for the Commissioners Court's meeting at 10 a.m. Tuesday, Oct. 20, which will be held at the Brazos County Medical Examiner's Office, 3037 E. 29th St. in Bryan.
What went wrong
In a Sept. 22 email to county election officials, the Texas Secretary of State's elections division said DPS had found that some voter registration records from online DPS transactions were incomplete, and as a result those files had never been sent to counties for review.
The state said it had worked with DPS to identify the affected records and would now pass them along. It split counties into two groups. For counties it called online, the state said it would hold back an older DPS record for any voter who had since filed a newer update, so the old record would not override it.
Counties it called offline, which use third-party voter registration vendors, would receive every record DPS provided, and the state urged them to check that an earlier DPS transaction did not undo a voter's more recent change. The email also said the state was working with DPS to make sure the fixes to its system were not affecting the daily files going forward.
The grant
On Oct. 2, the Secretary of State's financial division told counties it had found extra money to help with the late DPS applications. The grant reimburses costs above routine operations that are tied to the jump in applications and the approaching registration deadline. Counties get one reimbursement request, and the deadline to file it is Oct. 19.
The county's grant approval form, signed Oct. 8 by Trudy Hancock for the county's Elections Administration department and by County Auditor Marci Turner, describes the project as reimbursing overtime for registration staff after the DPS issue delayed about 4,300 applications.
