Michael and I talk about our specific experiences with the voter rolls in Oklahoma County. Michael from a candidate’s perspective during his run for Edmond School Board, and me from the time the Town of Luther (where I was Mayor for a term) decided to send out letters to ALL prospective voters, alerting them to the date of an upcoming vote to increase the sales tax. Unfortunately, both Michael and I had the same experience with the voter lists we received.
Michael got a list of the voters in his district to knock doors and send literature, and I got a list of voters in my district to send letters to, from the Oklahoma County Election Board (OCEB). Michael had loads of voters on his ‘walk’ list that door knockers found to be not living at the addresses identified by the OCEB and Jenni had a stack of about a quarter of the total letters she sent returned because of wrong addresses.
It makes sense that a candidate with nefarious purpose, might be able to ‘test’ a list by sending out mailers to everyone on the list given him/her by their county election board. They could then check addresses returned to make sure people don’t live at the listed address, wait until election time, apply for an absentee ballot with that person’s information and vote like the person is still on the rolls at that address. In this way, people could illegally vote absentee – and how would they be caught doing so?
From my time on the Oklahoma County Election Board (OCEB), I can tell you that there would be no way for ballot counters to have any idea if the person voting absentee lived at the address listed on the envelope – absentee ballots are notarized to signify that the voter is who he/she says they are – but it doesn’t take a genius to understand that anyone can apply to be a notary.
At the OCEB in 2023 when I was a Board member, the way absentee ballots were processed, we never even knew if there were notaries notarizing more than the lawful maximum of 20. The ballots were never laid out in piles per notary, they were simply checked to make sure all lawful information was present on the envelope and removed to another room for removal of the envelope.
Many of the elections in Edmond (Ronda Peterson, Michael Grande, Margaret Best – to name a few) that I’ve followed have had Republican candidates win at the ballot box, but then lose the race by a few absentee ballots. It certainly seems plausible and one reason Oklahoma needs to clean up our voter rolls.
Because I didn’t make a video clip of Chris’ perspective, I asked him to send me some of his suggestions for making sure Oklahoma’s voter rolls are as clean as possible.
Here’s what he sent:
Some of the things I would change are things we didn’t get into. I’d get rid of partisan registration (and so also straight party voting) and in fact I’d favor doing away with partisan primaries altogether. But that’s probably a different show that could also talk about open primaries, Top-Two jungle primaries, ranked-choice voting, election calendar reform, and that kind of stuff.To be specific to the voter roll, I think it’d be really easy to add a question of “has your address changed?’ when voters sign the book at the polling place on Election Day and get that new address. I’d also like to see an interstate voter roll integrity organization, but I’d like it to be limited to providing information for states to use as they see fit rather than dictating either to include or exclude voters. But a major point that Wendi and I alluded to but didn’t really state straight out is that the voter rolls are always going to be heavily dependent upon the actions of individual voters. All the laws in the world only work as well as people choosing to comply and if things are made too cumbersome it fuels the argument for a more wide-open system which is something I’m sure many people don’t want.
Wendi also sent me a follow-up with her ideas:
- SHOW PHOTO ID when reregistering.
- Reregister over 2 years and then archive the old rolls.
- Issue the State Election Board funds to advertise the reregistration, including mailers, commercials on local tv and radio networks.
- Allow provisional ballots at the polls for the first presidential election after the reregistration deadline for those who still wish to vote but missed the above advertising.
- Have special nursing home teams to get out and reregister the elderly and infirmed.
Election laws should be changed so that registered voters & candidates – through canvassing – can report voters not living at the address for which they are registered.The State Election Board should then go through the appropriate steps to verify the findings and remove the voter from the rolls once verified.The voter rolls need to be cleaned more often, and the State Election Board needs to look at the rolls and go through the proper process to get correct lawfully physical addresses for voters on the rolls and remove any addresses violating O.S.26
After reading the blog and watching the videos, take some time to have a discussion with your duly elected Representative and Senator about this issue – even forward them this article. As Wendi pointed out so well in her closing, clean voter rolls containing only lawful entries are of upmost importance to – not only the security of Oklahoma elections – but the electoral process itself.
