Texas election officials say the massive backlog of voter registration applications is finally cleared, and the timing could not be tighter. Early voting starts Monday, and until this week, hundreds of thousands of registrations were still sitting unprocessed because of a software glitch at the Department of Public Safety that began last October.

The problem was simple to describe and brutal to fix. When Texans registered at DPS offices, those records were supposed to flow to their home counties. The glitch stopped that from happening. Harris County alone had more than 75,000 delayed applications and brought in temporary workers to get through them. The Secretary of State’s office now says no county has pending applications, and provisional ballots remain available at polling locations as a safety net.

What is still missing is a full explanation. The state hasn’t detailed how a glitch ran for nearly a year without being caught, and voting rights groups have filed a lawsuit while U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla pressed Governor Abbott for answers. For voters here in Ellis County, the practical move is simple: confirm your registration status before Monday, especially if you registered at a DPS office in the past year. Have you checked yours yet?