Groups file another lawsuit over voter registration error

Well, a new complaint about Texas's voter registration process has been filed just weeks before the midterm election. Fox 4's Megan Boyd is live in Dallas this morning with the new details of this lawsuit. Hi, Megan. Good morning. Multiple voting rights groups have filed a lawsuit against the Secretary of State's office and the Texas Department of Public Safety over voter registration. Now, the lawsuit claims that the two state agencies have not held up their end of a settlement made by a federal judge in 2021 requiring online voter registration be made available on the DPS driver's license website. Now you might remember just last month DPS the DPS and the Secretary of State's office revealed a backlog of hundreds of thousands of voter registrations using that system through DPS. In a statement the Secretary of State's office tells us Texas counties have cleared the backlog and they do not know of any counties with pending applications. The statement goes on to say they will continue to support counties by issuing grants to cover the costs of overtime and hiring workers. We talked to an attorney not involved in this case about how things could move forward. The answer to the lawsuit ultimately is there's no lawsuit here, we fixed the problem. I think that's a win for the plaintiffs too, because they got formal confirmation and maybe encouraged people to finish stuff they hadn't quite finished yet. Now, Move Texas is one of the plaintiffs in this case. They sent Fox 4 a statement saying the current system is not working, and quote, every failed attempt and lost application pushes someone closer to giving up voting altogether, and that's the real harm here. The Secretary of State's office does say that voters who registered before or on October 5th, those applications will be in in time for the November 3rd election. And if someone who registered through DPS online services does not appear on a voter roll, they can still cast a provisional ballot. it. The election officials have the ability to check the DPS transactions. As long as that voter did in fact register, their vote will be counted. For Good Day, I'm Megan Boyd. All right, Megan, thanks for that update.