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Secretary of State Jane Nelson opens the 89th Legislature in the Texas House. Credit: Instagram \/ @senjanenelson<\/p>\nSecretary of State Jane Nelson opens the 89th Legislature in the Texas House. Credit: Instagram \/ @senjanenelson<\/p>\n
In February, Bexar County approved the contract for a new voter registration system after grappling for months with Texas\u2019 lagging and glitchy system. However, one more roadblock remains before the county can free itself of the old system: the State of Texas itself.<\/p>\n
In an April 28 letter to Bexar County officials obtained by the Current, Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson states that, even though the county has approved a contract with new vendor VR Systems, her office doesn\u2019t plan to follow the county\u2019s implementation timeline.<\/p>\n
That delay threatens to get in the way of Bexar County going online with the new system in time for November\u2019s consequential midterm elections, according to Precinct 4 County Commissioner Tommy Calvert.<\/p>\n
To Calvert, Nelson\u2019s letter to Bexar County Judge Peter Sakai and other county officials wasn\u2019t a typical missive from a state agency \u2014\u00a0it seems angry.<\/p>\n
\u201cI definitely saw it as a \u2018Go to hell,’\u201d said Calvert.<\/p>\n
The new system was initially approved by county commissioners in September. Nelson\u2019s delay follows a half-year slowdown at the county level<\/a> over a contractual impasse before the finalized contract was approved<\/a> in February.<\/p>\n Nelson \u2014\u00a0an appointee of Republican Gov. Greg Abbott charged with overseeing state elections \u2014\u00a0sent her letter in response to a request from Bexar County officials that her office expedite providing the voter data county elections officials need so they switch to the new third-party voter system. Calvert cosigned the county\u2019s letter. <\/p>\n The implementation proposal approved by the county set an April 30 deadline for delivery of the first batch of data from the state\u2019s TEAM 2.0 system so it could be uploaded, according to a copy of the county\u2019s letter, also obtained by the Current.<\/p>\n Instead of receiving that data, county officials got weeks of radio silence from the Secretary of State\u2019s office, followed by Nelson\u2019s letter calling the county timeline \u201cunrealistic.\u201d<\/p>\n The office of Sakai did not respond to a request for comment by press time. A spokesperson for Elections Administrator Michele Carew declined to comment on the story. However, the Secretary of State\u2019s office provided the following statement:<\/p>\n \u201cThe state has had 5 successful elections using the new TEAM system. Our staff has been working day and night to address any issues as they arise. \u00a0We will be working with Bexar County on a reasonable schedule.\u201d<\/p>\n Communication breakdown<\/strong><\/p>\n In Bexar County\u2019s letter to Nelson, Sakai lays out a timeline of delays and \u201climited communication\u201d from the Texas Secretary of State\u2019s Office as county elections personnel sent repeated requests for cooperation to ensure timely implementation of the new voting system.<\/p>\n Bexar County Elections Administrator Michele Carew first reached out to Leticia Salazar, the Texas Secretary of State\u2019s director of elections administration, on March 26 \u201cto begin the data migration process,\u201d according to Sakai\u2019s letter. After she received no response, Carew sent a followup to Salazar on March 30, the letter states.<\/p>\n On April 1, Salazar responded with the mandatory Vendor Authorization Form for Carew to fill out, which she completed and returned the following day. After two more weeks of radio silence, Carew sent another followup on April 16.<\/p>\n \u201cAs of April 22, we received an email from Leticia Salazar confirming that the County\u2019s request for data export has been received and forwarded to the State\u2019s vendor, Civix. However, we still do not have confirmation that the request for timely data migration will be fulfilled,\u201d Sakai\u2019s letter stated.<\/p>\n Is the slowdown deliberate on the part of the Secretary of State\u2019s office? Abbott\u2019s history of picking fights with Texas\u2019 blue-led cities and counties such as San Antonio and Bexar certainly begs the question. <\/p>\n \u201cI think that there\u2019s been a lot of smoke and it\u2019s up to them to put it out,\u201d Calvert said. \u201cThis is something that appears to be dragging out, and it\u2019s very suspicious.\u201d <\/p>\n In her April 28 letter, Nelson disputes the timeline Sakai laid out, stating \u201cBexar County did not inform my team of your contractual deadlines with your new\u00a0 vendor until April 21, 2026 \u2014 the day before you sent us your letter.\u201d<\/p>\n Nelson\u2019s letter also describes what she called a \u201cHerculean effort\u201d by her office to onboard Bexar County to the state system ahead of the November 2025 election. That came after a prior vendor, Votec, abruptly went out of business in August.<\/p>\n Nelson said her staff \u201cworked day and night and over weekends\u201d to bring Bexar County online with the statewide TEAM system in time for early voting. She maintained that a turnaround that normally can take months was accomplished in a few weeks \u2014\u00a0and at a cost to her office exceeding $100,000. <\/p>\n However, Calvert said Bexar County spent $450,000 of its own money addressing the 70,000-voter backlog ahead of the fall election.<\/p>\n Beyond that, once online, the state\u2019s TEAM system experienced massive errors, according to Bexar officials. Days before last fall\u2019s election, county elections staffers, who were working in shifts, found 11,000 San Antonio streets missing from the state system.<\/p>\n \u201cIf we hadn\u2019t found 11,000 streets that they were missing, we would have literally tens of thousands of people disenfranchised,\u201d Calvert said of the error. \u201cSo, [Nelson] beating her chest like she was our hero? \u2026 We appreciate the work they did, but we carried the lion\u2019s share of the cost.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018Unworkable\u2019 deadline?<\/strong><\/p>\n In her letter, Nelson acknowledged there was urgency to get Bexar County onto the state\u2019s TEAM system last fall because her office feared potential lawsuits should the system not be up and running in time for the contentious Project Marvel vote.<\/p>\n \u201cWe took on this herculean effort knowing that if we did not onboard the state\u2019s third-most-populated county, the November 2025 Election was at risk for a potential legal challenge,\u00a0including the City of San Antonio\u2019s ballot measure on funding for a new stadium for the San\u00a0Antonio Spurs,\u201d Nelson\u2019s letter states.<\/p>\n Now, Bexar County needs Nelson\u2019s office to cooperate with another tight turnaround and provide the county\u2019s voter data to its new vendor, VR Systems, which already has contracts with 14 other Texas counties. However, Nelson is pushing back.<\/p>\n \u201cYour request is to now go through this whole process again ahead of the November election to migrate data to a new system, under an unrealistic timeline based on your contract with a third-party vendor \u2014 a contract that my office is not a party to and has no legal obligations to meet,\u201d Nelson stated in her letter. <\/p>\n Nelson goes on to state that her office sacrificed \u201ccore system functionality\u201d and its ability to serve other Texas counties so it could prioritize Bexar County ahead of last fall\u2019s election. <\/p>\n \u201cHowever, you are now asking us to do the same thing,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n The letter ends by stating: \u201cThe timeline that you suggest is unworkable.\u201d<\/p>\n Given that Nelson\u2019s office provided the data<\/a> on all 18 million Texas voters to the Trump administration in January, Calvert said he doesn\u2019t understand why it can\u2019t provide a far smaller data set to Bexar County. Especially as the county attempts to abandon the glitchy state-provided TEAM system for its new vendor.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a .CSV file. This is not quantum computing,\u201d Calvert said, adding that the Secretary of State\u2019s Office is now waiting on data from an election management software company, Civix.<\/p>\n \u201cThe fact that they\u2019ve been trying to get [TEAM] working since August seems totally out of line,\u201d Calvert said. \u201c[Civix] really out to be held accountable for a lack of service to the Secretary of State\u2019s office or the Secretary of State\u2019s Office has got to figure out what\u2019s going on internally with their management.\u201d<\/p>\n Ahead of the March primary, Bexar County\u2019s backlog grew once again \u2014 that time to more than 7,000 voters<\/a> \u2014 as elections workers\u2019 input times using the state\u2019s TEAM 2.0 system slowed to a crawl. Once able to input 24 voters per hour, the lag dropped that number to just eight per hour.<\/p>\n County election workers also noted that screens sometimes failed to appear as they worked on TEAM 2.0. Other times, when staffers input data, it would evaporate into thin air, forcing them to submit it all over again. Further, the system attempted to send duplicate ballots to voters, sometimes as many as 13, officials say.<\/p>\n The county\u2019s new vendor, VR Systems, is a Florida-based company whose software enables counties to host voter data on premises. That proximity gives counties protection from some of the slowdown issues and glitches experienced with the state\u2019s system, according to VR officials.<\/p>\n Texas\u2019 TEAM system isn\u2019t equipped to handle a county of Bexar\u2019s size, Bexar County Elections Administrator Carew told the Current in previous interviews. That makes the slowdowns more pronounced for the county\u2019s database of 2 million voters.<\/p>\n The lags in data input created a backlog of over 70,000 voters ahead of last fall\u2019s election \u2014 and this November\u2019s contest is expected to attract a much larger number of voters.<\/p>\n Back of the line<\/strong><\/p>\n As the Secretary of State pushes back against Sakai\u2019s proposed timeline, two other Texas counties \u2014 Kaufman and Midland \u2014 have already gotten ahead of Bexar in the queue for implementation with VR Systems.<\/p>\n In January, the vendor warned that such a situation might occur based on the level of interest it received from Texas counties at a conference.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were approached by a lot of existing TEAM counties that are very unhappy with TEAM,\u201d VR Systems\u2019 Chief Operating Officer Ben Martin told the Current at a January Commissioners Court<\/a> meeting. He added that the company only takes one county live at a time to minimize risk.<\/p>\n \u201cSo, if [other counties] approach us looking to sign a contract, Bexar pushes back,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n Now, that scenario has come to pass, potentially jeopardizing Bexar County\u2019s ability to go online with the vendor in time for the fall election. That would require the county staying on the state\u2019s TEAM 2.0 system through an election with high stakes and high turnout.<\/p>\n More residents may be disenfranchised as a result, Calvert said. And that could lead to legal problems and further undermine faith in our elections.<\/p>\n \u201cIt means that the large numbers of people who are trying to register to vote in this election may not be inputted because of the slowness of the state system,\u201d Calvert said. \u201cIt\u2019s gotten a little better but it\u2019s still not fully functional.\u201d<\/p>\n Sign Up for SA Current newsletters.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Follow us:\u00a0Apple News<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Google News<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0NewsBreak<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Reddit<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Instagram<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Facebook\u00a0<\/a>| Twitter<\/a>\u00a0| Or sign up for our\u00a0RSS Feed<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Related Stories<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \n\t\t\t\t\tThe new contract will enable the county to abandon a faulty statewide system in time for November\u2019s midterm elections, officials say.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
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