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Unknown number of Texas voter registrations went unprocessed due to DPS errorvotebeat.org

It’s unknown how many prospective voters have been affected.

106 points•hn_acker•6 days ago•195 comments•
#unknown#texas#due#registrations#voter#unprocessed#went#dps

195 comments

nblgbg6 days ago
When I first registered in Texas, they told me that something didn’t match the details with Social Security and that they couldn’t process my registration. Unfortunately, they never told me exactly what didn’t match. After chasing Social Security and the county multiple times, I eventually figured out that someone had put an extra space in my middle name. The staff processing my request were very helpful, but unfortunately, they didn’t even know what exactly was not matching.

It’s really unfortunate that you have the burden of proving that your information is correct. It took me about 6/7 weeks to complete the entire process.

They also mail you a voter registration card (which itself isn’t useful anywhere), and if, for any reason, it doesn’t reach you, your name will be suspended from the list.

The whole process feels like it’s designed to discourage people from voting.

datsci_est_20156 days ago
When corporations use similar tactics we call them “dark patterns”. Unfortunately, the only weapon we the people have against these tactics is regulation. But when it’s the government doing these things… anyway. Hope the Democratic Party has learned that conservative leadership won’t evolve their platform, they’ll reject democracy.
someonebaggy6 days ago
I'm not convinced the Democratic Party is capable of learning anything ever at all.

Or maybe I'm confusing incompetence with malice. Maybe they want to lose and be the spoiler party.

furytrader6 days ago
"The only weapon we the people have against these tactics is regulation"

That's not true. If it's a company doing it, you have the choice to not be a customer of the company. Don't give them any of your money if you don't like how they do business.

The same can't be said of government. If you don't give your money, in the form of taxes, you go to jail.

sehw6 days ago
a gun?
polotics6 days ago
Maybe that's because it is, maybe most people the current Texas leadership want to get votes from are not the ones that newly first register in Texas?
zbentley6 days ago
> The whole process feels like it’s designed to discourage people from voting.

Possible, but I doubt it. I've worked on the systems that do things like ID correlation/verification on the backend. They're ... imagine the most broken possible implementation you've ever worked on, then imagine it worse, then imagine that it's maintained by entirely different contractors than the ones that built it, with minimal incentive for improvement.

That's most of government IT implementations, and has been for decades.

Even when specific systems in this area are implemented well, the regulatory/bureaucratic complexity of the government prevents them from being more than marginally useful at best. I expanded more on some of the concerns/issues in this area in an adjacent comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49832393

embedding-shape6 days ago
Maybe that's the designed part? I mean, in lots of more "modern" countries (for the lack of better word), voting is basically showing up, presenting ID, then you can check for the results online yourself to see it registered properly, then that's it.

To me the whole system with voter registration and all other jazz, seems designed to indeed discourage people from voting. Why wouldn't you want it to be efficient and simple otherwise?

crote6 days ago
The system is designed to rely on fundamentally-flawed things like ID correlation and verification. Broken implementations were the desired outcome, because the constant doubt allows for things like disenfranchising people via voter roll purging.
tpm6 days ago
That's only possible in countries with completely broken citizen IDs (like the US and the UK). Of course correlation is messy and broken and it's not used in other countries. It's also intentional because every attempt at fixing gets stopped or even backtracked.

In other countries citizens have IDs, and the ID can be sometimes wrong (ask me how I know, although that was back in the paper era) and that's the one thing that needs to be fixed. Once the ID is correct, everything works, because that's the single source of truth after that.

ThePowerOfFuet6 days ago
>The whole process feels like it’s designed to discourage people from voting.

Now you get it.

orf5 days ago
> The whole process feels like it’s designed to discourage people from voting.

“the purpose of a system is what it does”

agos6 days ago
the entire concept of "voter registration" (and associated shenanigans) is so alien to my European brain that I fail to see any reason why the richest country in the world does things this way other than voter suppression. What am I missing?
bickfordb6 days ago
It's a distinct blue/red state issue. Blue states go out of their way to register as many of their residents as possible and allow same day registration.

The red states, Republicans use it as a tool to reduce participation of urban, non-white voters and reduce overall participation. They don't consider systematic, passive voter suppression techniques to be voter fraud.

seizethecheese6 days ago
Outside of the US spectrum, there are countries that require all citizens to vote or face fines (Peru for example). I find this interesting, because it's so out of sample compared to the typical political fights within the US about voter registration.
mikeocool6 days ago
I'm not sure it's strictly red state/blue state. I've live in Massachusetts and Minnesota for a while, where they made it very easy to vote so that tracks.

However, now I live in New York, where they seem to go out of their way to make it difficult. The registration cutoff is several weeks before the election and for at least one election, I found myself wrongfully expunged from the voter roles.

I think it may just be how corrupt the state government is.

brainwad6 days ago
It's the price paid for not having a general population register. You only need to enroll to vote if you want to vote, and the voter registration is (theoretically) only for that purpose and won't be used for other purposes. Every government interaction in the anglosphere works this way; you always have to reprove your id and address from scratch.
crote6 days ago
More specifically, it pretends it doesn't have a general population register. In reality there is a nearly 1:1 match between citizens and SSNs, but everyone just pretends it doesn't exist for political reasons. The fact that the USA was ever able to do a draft is another obvious counterexample.
someonebaggy6 days ago
The European population registers are as bad as voter registration btw and as manipulated. I'm currently not registered (which is illegal) as I've been purged from the population register and due to similar bureaucratic excuses, can't re-register. Fortunately it's usually irrelevant, but I have no doubt some government department is bending statistics in its favor by excluding a group of people that includes me.
bitmasher96 days ago
American Democracy started from a place of very strict voter requirements (white, male, adult, landowner) and is trending towards fewer voter requirements.

The registration process is mostly a legacy system to ensure only qualified individuals vote, left over from a time when the bar was much higher.

watwut6 days ago
The "male" bar is not "higher bar". It is just a suppression of rights of half the population. Sake with white.

And frankly, similat to "landowner". You arw simply biasing it toward slaveowners and their class.

toast06 days ago
Pretty sure countries in Europe have voter registration too? Here's a page to register in France. [1]

The US was organized around a very limited federal government (this has changed over time). Each state is responsible for elections within the state. There's no exact national registry of citizens, although Social Security keeps a de facto registry as most citizens are enumerated by that administration and their records include citizenship indication. Strictly speaking, registration with social security is not mandatory, it is required for employees and a child must be registered to qualify for tax credits and it makes administrative tasks simpler.

Within each state, voting is typically administered by county (or similar level) offices; although I think many states have a state wide process to register.

A given voter will vote for many positions (and often some propositions), and electoral boundaries for positions don't necessarily align with anything else or each other. So there's a lot of complexity there.

The residence address of the voter is the important thing that decides which elections they can participate in, but since there is no real registry of residence (de facto or de jure), it needs to be collected seperately.

[1] https://www.service-public.gouv.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/R1...

spiralpolitik6 days ago
Since the motor voter bills in the 90s. Most US states handle voter registration via the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). When you apply for your license or renew you tick the box and it automatically registers you.

The drivers license database is the defaco registry of where you live and most states require you to update your address within 2 weeks of moving (although enforcement is loose). There is a state identification card for those who don't drive that fulfills the same purpose as a drivers license.

Since RealID states now have to check immigration status if you request a RealID license (some states will issue non-RealID drivers licenses to the undocumented). There is a further Enhanced ID check that some states do that will indicate that you are a US citizen on the license. RealID and non RealID licenses are clearly marked.

Basically true voter fraud is largely a non issue because the States generally have their systems together. Voter suppression, which is the goal of most of the voting related legislation of the last 20 years, is however rampant.

ironman14786 days ago
You're not missing anything.
hn_acker6 days ago
I posted an older article because I wanted the focus to be on the online registration system. According to a newer article, the number is easily in the tens of thousands [1].

[1] https://www.votebeat.org/texas/2026/09/23/dps-error-backlogg...

simonw6 days ago
TIL a great deal of voter registration in Texas still happens using paper forms: https://www.votebeat.org/texas/2024/10/28/voter-registration...

And apparently they sometimes get lost or processed incorrectly, leaving people disenfranchised.

skullone6 days ago
Oregon auto atically registers you to vote when you get a license/ID, and has a pretty reliable mail in voting system. Other states interested in their constituents should do the same

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