Bexar County’s Voter Registration Software Switch Further Delayed

Tribune News Service — Bexar County’s troubled switch to a new software vendor to manage voter registration is running behind schedule, raising questions about whether the new system will be ready for the many new voters expected to register before this November’s midterm elections.

County leaders asked Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson late last month to speed up the transfer of the county’s voter rolls to Florida-based VR Systems — a key step to get the new system up and running.

They got a harsh response, with Nelson calling the county’s proposed timeline “unworkable.”

It’s the latest turn in an ongoing saga that started last summer when a software company that Bexar County contracted with for voter services went bust. The Elections Department worked through a backlog of more than 70,000 voter registrations ahead of the controversial November 2025 vote on funding for a new downtown arena for the Spurs.

The five-member Commissioners Court approved a contract with VR Systems in February to provide the software that stores the county’s voter rolls. The software is crucial for keeping an updated database of registered voters, matching them with the correct voting precinct and ensuring they get the right ballot at the polls.

In the meantime, the county has been using the state’s free Texas Election Administration Management System, known as TEAM.

County Judge Peter Sakai and Precinct 4 Commissioner Tommy Calvert penned an April 22 letter to Nelson, saying: “Timely delivery of quality data is essential to safeguard the integrity, accuracy and readiness of Bexar County’s election infrastructure ahead of the November election and to uphold our shared responsibility to ensure a free and fair electoral process.”

Nelson pointed to what her office had already done for the county: meeting “impossible deadlines” to move Bexar County onto the state’s system ahead of the fall 2025 election, after California-based VOTEC, the county’s previous software vendor, shut down and voter registrations stalled.

“We took on this herculean effort knowing that if we did not onboard the state’s third most populated county, the November 2025 election was at risk for a potential legal challenge, including the city of San Antonio’s ballot measure on funding for a new stadium for the San Antonio Spurs,” Nelson wrote. “We were not going to let that happen, so we moved Bexar County to the front of the line and we did so at great cost to state taxpayers.”

“Your 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 — a contract that my office is not a party to and has no legal obligations to meet,” she added.

County commissioners first discussed bringing on a new voter registration firm in August after VOTEC announced that it was going out of business. Commissioners didn’t approve a contract with VR Systems until Feb. 17.

“I believe everybody’s working in good faith,” Sakai said in an interview. “I take the secretary of state at face value with her frustrations. We have mutual frustrations.”

Elections Administrator Michele Carew declined to comment on the exchange, deferring to Sakai and Calvert, who authored the letter.

They asked Nelson’s office to transfer one portion of data from the state’s software to VR Systems by April 30 and another by June 18. Because the county is currently using TEAM, the state has the most recent data on Bexar County’s 1.3 million registered voters that VR Systems needs to configure the software.

Sakai and Calvert also asked for a “reasonable increase in communication” from the Secretary of State’s office to “meet implementation deadlines.”

Calvert said the secretary of state’s response to the letter was “par for the course,” adding that transferring data files should be a relatively quick process.

Calvert said he sees Bexar County as a constituent of the Secretary of State. When a constituent comes to Calvert with an issue, he said, “I go and I try to research the problem and communicate how we’re going to solve the problem, and I think that’s where the taxpayers expect the Secretary of State’s head to be.”

Precinct 3 Commissioner Grant Moody, the lone Republican commissioner, has been against hiring a new contractor from the start. He sees it as an unnecessary expense, noting that the county had administered four elections in the past year using TEAM.

Under the terms of its contract with VR Systems, Bexar County does not owe most of the $1.5 million it owes the company in the first year until TEAM data is transferred and the new system is initially configured.

Nelson said bringing Bexar County onto the state’s system for last November’s election cost Texas taxpayers more than $100,000.

Sakai and Calvert also wrote to state lawmakers who represent Bexar County, asking them to urge the Secretary of State’s office to prioritize sending the data to Bexar County.

Sakai said the county is “still working on a timeline” to get the new software ready for the surge in voter registrations expected ahead of the November midterm elections. But he stopped short of ruling out using TEAM for what would be the fifth time, saying the county cannot move to VR Systems until the Secretary of State sends the data.

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