Since replacing a longtime elections chief last year, Bexar County has spent big upgrading the county’s election technology.
It’s purchased more voting machines, replaced aging tabulation equipment, added new devices to assist people with disabilities and overhauled its website to deliver results and help voters find the shortest lines.
Now as a high-profile Nov. 3 midterm election approaches, Elections Administrator Michele Carew says voters will start to notice some of the improvements, while others won’t be up and running in time for this election.
Perhaps most notably, Bexar County’s plan to switch to a new voter registration system — intended to cut ties from a problematic state-run system — won’t happen until January.
“We’re wanting to build voter confidence, but TEAM has destroyed the voter confidence that’s in place,” Carew said of the state’s voter registration system.
The TEAM system caused a massive registration backlog last year that left voters without a new voter registration card before the March primary.
Carew said in an Aug. 24 interview that it still struggles to present accurate information to voters tracking their ballot — sowing distrust in a system that’s producing fair elections.
“Even though we show that we received an application, we mailed them a ballot, the ballot came back, and the ballot was counted, it’s not reflected in TEAM,” Carew said.
The switch to a new system was delayed due to a sluggish county purchasing procedures and delays transferring data.
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Still, Bexar County voters who’ve experienced long lines at the polls and delays in learning the results could see some improvement this year.
Bexar County will be operating 20% more poll pads to check voters in for this November’s election, Carew said, thanks in part to a $4 million grant from the Help America Vote Act.
That should move lines faster, though the county won’t see a major uptick in the number of polling locations, because the department still lacks the staff and equipment to open them.
Voters should also be able to check wait times online before heading to vote — among many other upgrades aimed at updating Bexar County’s antiquated election procedures before a high-profile U.S. Senate race, governor’s race and other contests on the Nov. 3 ballot.
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The San Antonio Report caught up with Carew to talk about all of her modernization efforts, her experience with a troubled voter registration system, and what voters should expect in a high-profile midterm election.
This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Before you arrived in 2025, most of the conversation surrounding Bexar County elections was about the number of poll sites. Former Elections Administrator Jacque Callanen was sued multiple times for operating too few locations, and elected leaders made clear they wanted the next elections administrator to be more proactive in expanding voting access. Where do things stand today?
Currently, we have 301 [Election Day polling locations] that we have verified are available [for the Nov. 3 election]. We do have some school districts that are starting to come back around saying, ‘Hey, we’re available,’ but it’s a matter of how many machines we have.”
Is 301 enough? Voting rights advocates who sued the county in the past said it should be operating 388 polling locations, or half the number of voter precincts.
That’s what they were demanding, but when I came into this position, I did reach out to the Secretary of State about it, and [they said it’s] 50% of the number of precincts you had previously had open. So 285 is what’s legally required.
Although there were the 776 voter precincts [in Bexar County], the county never had that many [voting locations] open. So when we went to vote centers [which allow people to cast a ballot at any location, instead of just their precinct] it was 50% of the highest number of locations they had open.
What the public needs to realize is that we are in compliance with the state, and not only that, but we are opening up [more locations than] the last election.
During the primary we only had 287 … now we’re looking at possibly 302.
What would it take to open more?
More equipment and staff. Not just in my office, but also at the polls. Finding judges and clerks is huge. It’s one of our biggest obstacles, finding the people who are willing to work, because the days are long.
You’ve worked on elections for many years now, both as an administrator, and as a vendor for election technology. Talk about some of the upgrades Bexar County has made since you arrived about 18 months ago, and how it might shape the voting experience in this election.
I was able to purchase additional poll pads, so that at the busier locations, we can give them more voting equipment and more check-ins to help prevent long lines.
Each poll pad needs a printer, so I purchased about $352,000 worth of ballot printers, [and] curbside carts for our ADA accessibility. We spent $403,500 on curbside equipment to help enhance our curbside procedures.
We also upgraded our tabulation equipment. As you remember in the previous election, people felt that the numbers were not coming out fast, and part of the issue was that the tabulation equipment takes a picture of every single ballot that’s ever cast, so we had seven years worth of ballots on there.
We bought new USBs, which are the thumb drives used to hold and record ballots as they’re cast … We bought 65 DS300 [tabulators] for early voting. It’s just like the DS200, but faster, more efficient. Since [early voting] is where our biggest turnout is, we invested there.
We also purchased two DS950s, which are for [counting mail ballots]. They’re faster, more efficient. A lot of times when the ballots are being read, they can jam up, and this doesn’t jam.
We have the new election night reporting system that’s [been online for the past few elections]. Rather than just a scanned-in image of a report, we have an actual software system.
We’re also getting a new website with a wait-time feature for this election.
Let’s say it’s 6:45 p.m. on the last day to early vote, people [will be able to] go to our website, see where the longest lines are, and if there’s something close to them that gives them the opportunity to just walk in and out, and then they’ll be able to find it.
We’ve also enhanced our ability to communicate with our election workers by implementing a poll worker portal, which allows us to email and text and keep up with messages that we send back and forth, along with assignments, notices of trainings, and also their writs of election.
So things are changing, a little bit at a time.
Some of the people that have been around for a long time, election judges and clerks, they’re really struggling with that because they were used to it a certain way. But we’re just trying to enhance the voting process.
One of the biggest investments the county is making is a private voter registration system, VR Systems, which wasn’t on that list. Many large Texas counties used a private company that went out of business months before the November election in 2025, and then quickly had to migrate to the state’s TEAM system last year, which had a lot of issues. What’s going on with that transition?
Once we’re in full-time election mode, they can’t be fiddling around in our voter registration system, so we put it on hold.
We’re on track with VR systems, and we should be live with them at the end of January.
The Secretary of State’s office said the TEAM problems were caused by so many counties coming online at the last minute, when the system was also undergoing a major update. Is there a chance Bexar County no longer needs to move to a private vendor, and could stick with the free system the state provides?
TEAM is what it is, but it is not ready for an extra large county.
Let’s just go back to last year’s [voter registration] backlog, we had applications that were coming in 1,000 per day. In our previous system, it would do the process for you, and then give you a list of some that you needed to review. Now we have to look at every single one, one at a time, so that is huge for us.
In our ballot-by-mail system, there have been some complaints from voters that they’re not able to track their ballot.
We’ve discovered the information we’re putting into TEAM is there for a period and then it’s gone. We don’t know who deleted it, or why it’s not there. Even though we show that we received an application, we mailed them a ballot, the ballot came back, and the ballot was counted, it’s not reflected in TEAM.
In the previous version, TEAM 1.0, you could update multiple [mail ballot statuses] — like 25 to 50 ballots at a time. You could just scan the barcodes, show that you received them and that they were counted. Now you have to go into each individual profile.
So, the automations just aren’t there. Will they eventually get there? Maybe.
But we’ve had a multitude of trouble tickets that we’ve sent over, that have been shared with Civics, the creator of TEAM, that are still unanswered, and some of them are three, four, or five months old.
What’s weighing on you the most headed into this midterm election?
There’s a lot that weighs on me. There’s no such thing as a perfect election. But is there a clean, precise, honest, election? Yes.
So our goals, every day, are to provide that to our voters. We want them to get what they deserve: a clean, fair, honest, and accurate election.
That’s where some of our obstacles with TEAM come in. We’re wanting to build voter confidence, but TEAM has destroyed the voter confidence that’s in place.
That’s a powerful statement.
I don’t want to talk bad about TEAM, because I respect the Secretary of State’s office. They are the backbone to the entire state, and they have a lot that’s weighing on them. But we need a system that’s going to work for Bexar County.
Texas just experienced some turnover in that role, and voting rights advocates were very concerned about who Gov. Greg Abbott might choose. How are things going with new Secretary of State Robert Howden?
We met him at a conference a couple weeks ago. It was really nice. He seems like he’s interested in knowing what’s going on in the election world. There were a couple times that we went to the Secretary of State conference, and the previous Secretary of State didn’t even show up. She just sent a video.
It’s important to us that we know that we’re being supported. I’m not saying that we weren’t, with the previous Secretary of State. They have a lot going on, but just putting a little bit more focus on the elections keeps us feeling confident in what we do, and providing us with the support we need. I know that we get that from their legal division and from their TEAM division.
You mentioned at Commissioners’ Court last month that high voter turnout projections this November could be overblown. Texas saw some unusually high turnout in the March primary, motivated in large part by the U.S. Senate race. Why do you think the general election might be different?
I wasn’t here in the past elections, but there are people in this department that have been here upwards of 30 years, and others that have been here for more than 10. We all got together and talked about what to expect in this upcoming election, and a lot of them just feel like maybe we’re over-planning.
We want to be prepared, so we’re going to provide extra locations. We’re going to provide trained election clerks to be able to understand their roles.
We’re also providing them with emergency preparedness, so they know what to do in case there is an emergency. Because there’s fear out there about polling locations, whether it be a voter or a worker.
Just based upon the conversations I’ve had with people who have been here a long time, it feels as though we’re planning for a really large election, and there might not be one. But I’d rather be over-prepared than not prepared at all.
Should voters expect long lines?
We know the polls are not going to close at 7 p.m. There are going to be long lines, just like in the primary. [Polls will technically close at their regularly scheduled time, but voters who are standing in line then are still legally allowed to cast a ballot.]
For early voting in the primary, we had almost 2,600 people vote after 7 p.m. On Election Day, we had 4,200 people vote after 7 p.m.
What would it take to fix that?
Adding polling equipment at the busiest sites, and providing more support to our election judges and clerks. If they’re calling saying, “Hey, we’ve got people that have been in line for extended periods of time,” then we know we need to send out more voting equipment to them.
Is it too late to get more voting machines for this election?
The procurement process is robust here in Bexar County, plus I’d have to get together with our vendor, and the vendor doesn’t always have that many in stock.
Elections administrators across Texas have faced a pretty high burnout, and you’ve endured your fair share of criticism since coming into this role. Any regrets?
I don’t have any regrets. In order to be in elections, you have to be a little crazy, so I feel like I fit right in.
