With two statewide voter registration systems under duress, Bexar County is laying plans to pay a new vendor starting this year.

The decision comes as roughly 45,000 voter registration applications remain in limbo ahead of the Nov. 4 election — angering some voting rights advocates who say the county should have moved sooner to find a new system.

“If we fail to get these folks taken care of prior to the November election, it will be a monumental failure,” Commissioner Tommy Calvert (Pct. 4) said this week.

Texas requires counties to provide the state with an up-to-date voter registration list and launched the TEAM system more than two decades ago to help them manage that task.

Bexar County was among a number of larger counties that continued paying an outside voter registration vendor to avoid a state system with problems — but now the county faces issues with the independent vendor as well.

Last year the California-based company Votec demanded more money from the Texas counties it serves to make up for financial shortfalls, causing some to make the jump to the state’s TEAM system.

Bexar County coughed up the additional cash to stick with Votec in 2024 — only to find out in April that the company was again experiencing major problems.

Now just weeks out from early voting for the Nov. 4 election with a Spurs arena, rodeo grounds and state constitutional amendments on the ballot, Votec is no longer a viable vendor.

The county’s new vendor won’t be ready until after the election is over — and officials are crossing their fingers hoping the state system they’ve long avoided will pull through.

“We’re already out of compliance with state law right now [by not processing the new registrations on time],” Calvert said. “It’s a very serious issue.”

A modernized department

New Elections Administrator Michele Carew brought the Votec issue to county leaders over the summer and requested money to move to a new vendor, VR Systems, which she says has some functionalities that TEAM doesn’t.

While commissioners have generally been supportive of making sure the fast-growing county has the best election technology available, Carew’s ask came as county leaders had just approved a number of other big equipment upgrades — causing some consternation about the necessity of this latest one.

The court’s lone Republican, Commissioner Grant Moody (Pct. 3), said he wanted the elections department to give the TEAM system a try to see if its latest version could save money.

“It just makes sense that we would wait until we actually know whether TEAM and the new functionality is going to be a solution for us or not before we go spend $2 million on a new system,” said Moody, who cast the lone vote against Carew’s proposed vendor swap.

Meanwhile, Calvert blamed the deliberations for putting residents at risk of ineligibility this election.

“A two-month delay led us to exactly what the elections administrator recommended in the first place,” Calvert said. “If we had acted back then, the system would have been ready by September or October, instead of December.”

In the meantime, the county will have to rely on TEAM this year. TEAM is currently in the process of rolling out a new version with upgrades and improvements, and adding the counties that previously used Votec has slowed that rollout down, according to the Secretary of State’s office.

But state officials are certain it will work in time for Bexar County to process voters for this election.

“Bexar County will use TEAM for the November election,” Assistant Secretary of State for Communications Alicia Phillips Pierce said in a statement. “Bexar County voters can feel confident in their ability to vote this November.”