McLennan County elections and party leaders urge voters to take a moment to check their registration status as the Oct. 5 registration deadline for the November election approaches.
More than 28,500 registered voters are on the county “suspense” list, meaning the elections office is seeking to verify their addresses. That amounts to 18% of registered voters — by far the highest percentage of any Texas county, according to Texas Secretary of State data from March.
County Elections Administrator Jared Goldsmith said it’s easy to check your registration status by visiting www.votetexas.gov. Anyone whose status is in question can contact the McLennan County Elections Office and correct it by filling out a simple statement of residence form, Goldsmith said.
Goldsmith said the idea of a “suspense list” may sound scary, but it doesn’t mean those voters’ registration is suspended or canceled. Voters have plenty of opportunities to correct their status, he said.
The Oct. 5 registration deadline is the last day to change your address. Those who don’t discover their suspense status until Election Day on Nov. 3 can still vote, as long as they live in the same county. They just need to fill out the address form at the polls.
After the Oct. 5 deadline, those who have moved to a new county can go to the county elections office during the early voting period that runs Oct. 19-30 and cast a limited ballot.
Recent headlines and social media posts have raised alarms about the 1.2 million suspense voters in Texas. In fact, it’s about 6.7% of Texas voters, consistent with levels in past elections, according to Votebeat Texas.
McLennan County GOP Chair Chris DeCluitt said local Republicans are vigilant about election integrity, but he doesn’t see any issues with the local elections office, including the voter registration process.
“We believe in McLennan County everything is solid,” he said.
County Democratic Chair Mark Hays said being on the suspense list is usually easy to rectify, and he encouraged voters to deal with it now to avoid delays at the polls.
Hays said the public’s concern is understandable at a time of anxiety and confusion about voting access.
Just this week, the Supreme Court settled a monthslong court battle over the Trump administration’s efforts to involve the U.S. Postal Service in vetting mail-in ballots. The high court on Monday blocked the plan, just weeks before the Oct. 23 deadline to apply for mail-in ballot.
“I believe all these kinds of things create a scary impression of voting,” Hays said. “I think it does influence turnout a little.”
Local Democrats are sending mass texts to people on the suspense lists and distributing voter registration packets to apartments where tenants may be more likely to miss a notification from the county.
Party volunteers are also stepping up voter registration efforts ahead of the Oct. 5 registration deadline for a midterm that both local parties and county election officials expect to have a heavy turnout.
Voters who have recently moved or changed their name should apply to update that information by Oct. 5. Information is available here.
Goldsmith said the size of the McLennan County suspense list is typical for federal election years. He said the large number of college students and other transients may influence the number.
“Looking at this number, alarm bells did not go off, because it’s very typical of what we see here,” he said. In a 2024 KXXV story, Goldsmith estimated there were 30,000 county voters on the list.
A precinct-by-precinct analysis by local Democratic volunteer Cheryl Foster shows the highest concentrations of suspense voters in Precinct 3 in the Baylor area (1,248) and Precinct 12 in the Carver Park area of East Waco (616).
Goldsmith said the suspense list is based on returned mail, not geography or demographics.
“We would never target any individual or location in the county,” he said.
Getting on, off the list
In an interview Wednesday, Goldsmith explained how the list is formed and how voters can get their status confirmed:
- Before a federal election year, usually in December, the elections office sends out cards to all its registered voters. You don’t have to respond to that mailing, and if you’re a registered voter, you don’t need to renew even if you rarely vote.
- When cards are returned by the U.S. Postal Service as undeliverable, the voter goes on the suspense list. Voters could also be placed on the list if a jury summons was returned as nondeliverable or if the voter registrar has received information that the voter no longer resides at the address.
- The elections office then sends the voter a statement of residence form, using a forwarding address if it is available.
- Voters who still don’t respond will learn about the issue next time they vote and will be asked at the polls to fill out a statement of residence, with no proof of address needed. They will still be able to vote as long as they have not moved out of the county.
- Voters on the list who sit out two federal election cycles without voting will be purged from the voter rolls. That means names will be purged late this year for voters on the suspense list who did not vote in the 2024 or 2026 elections or elections in between.
“At this point, we’ve done everything we can trying to reach out to them with the address confirmation form,” Goldsmith said. “The state has given them two federal election cycles to get this corrected. That’s up to four years. At that point, they would be removed.”
State glitches
Democratic and GOP leaders in McLennan County say they have experienced issues this year with the Texas Secretary of State voter registration database not being up to date with the county list.
Rich Ahlers, a Waco billing software executive, said he experienced those problems firsthand. A Tribune-Herald article prompted him to check the Secretary of State site, where he discovered he was not listed. However, he is on the county voting rolls, and Goldsmith said that is enough to allow him to vote.
Still, Ahlers said the state glitch sows confusion at a time when people are skeptical about election security.
“It gives you less confidence in our elections than what we had before,” he said.
DeCluitt, the GOP chair, said both local parties were concerned about problems with glitches in the state voter systems as they were updated, but local voting and registration are unaffected.
Mail-in voting proceeds
Meanwhile, both party chairs agreed with the Supreme Court’s decision to reject the effort to put the U.S. Postal Service in charge of verifying that mail-in ballots matched voter registration lists, saying it could have led to delays and confusion.
The issue affects voters of both parties. In the March primaries in McLennan County, 722 Democrats and 880 Republicans voted by mail. The total of 1,602 absentee voters amounted to about 4% of the total of 38,820 voters.
Goldsmith said he was “on pins and needles” before the Supreme Court decision, and the office had taken preliminary steps to ensure it could supply voters with federally approved envelopes.
Voters can apply for absentee status for an entire year or on a short-term basis based on life circumstances.
Eligible voters include those 65 or older, disabled or ill voters, voters who will be out of the county during early voting and Election Day and those expecting to give birth within three weeks of Election Day.
Though voters have until Oct. 23 to apply for a mail ballot, Goldsmith encouraged them to get their application in early to avoid possible delays. He said postal delays resulted in a few late mail ballots in the March primaries.
Goldsmith said absentee ballots should begin going out in the next couple of weeks.
Correction, Sept. 19, 2026, 10:45 a.m. Central:
An earlier version of this article misstated the number of suspense voters in the summary.
