TULSA, Okla. — These days, the Tulsa County Election Board is busy sorting and securing a record-breaking number of absentee ballots.
“In this era of COVID mixed with elections, I want you to know that our election board secretary, Gwen Freeman, after speaking with both the local and state postal officials, is absolutely confident there will not be any issues with the delivery of absentee ballots for next Tuesday's election nor for November third's election," stated Tulsa County Commissioner Karen Keith during Thursday’s COVID update press conference.“In this era of COVID mixed with elections, I want you to know that our election board secretary, Gwen Freeman, after speaking with both the local and state postal officials, is absolutely confident there will not be any issues with the delivery of absentee ballots for next Tuesday's election nor for November third's election," stated Tulsa County Commissioner Karen Keith during Thursday’s COVID update press conference.
“There’s a lot of folks who can’t get out and vote in person or don’t feel comfortable voting in person,” Freeman said.
The board mailed out a record number of absentee ballots, last and this month in Tulsa county, five times higher than the last election in June.
Loads of absentees are delivered to the board every day. Each letter is opened and checked for mistakes.
“Please read the instructions, you have to sign that document - the affidavit that’s there,” Freeman said. “A lot of people are forgetting to sign it.”
Also forgetting to get it notarized or include a valid ID copy. Usually, the board has about a two percent rejection rate on absentee ballots. So far, Freeman said, they are below two percent, adding, the probability of voter fraud is even lower.
She said, “The safety backups, the backups to the backups that we have, the paper ballot backups that we have, the fact that our machines are not connected to the internet and can’t be hacked. They’re standalone devices.”
However they come in, each ballot is put in a box and closed with three locks. Three different board members keep a key and a sheriff’s deputy ensures ballots are locked in.
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