OKLAHOMA CITY – The “time and expense” required to perform an audit of the 2020 general election in Oklahoma as requested by a state legislator are “not justified for an election that was conducted more than eight months ago,” the Secretary of the State Election Board concluded. State Rep. Sean Roberts, R-Hominy, announced Tuesday that he asked State Election Board Secretary Paul Ziriax to call for an Arizona-style “forensic and independent audit” of the 2020 general election results in Oklahoma County and two other “random” counties in the state. “Oklahomans have the right to know their election results can be trusted,” Roberts said. “Every citizen deserves to have faith in the integrity of the election process and its outcome,” he wrote in a letter to Ziriax.
The "timing and manner of audit you have requested appears to be inconsistent with the requirements of state law,” Ziriax responded. “Your request would require a new law enacted by the State Legislature and the appropriation of necessary funding.” The cost of a simple recount isn’t cheap, as House Bill 2564, which goes into effect later this year, demonstrates. Yet Roberts asked for an in-depth audit of the votes cast in Oklahoma County and two other counties. The lawmaker said what he requested would consist of audits of voter registration and votes cast, vote count and tally, election voting systems, and reported results.
Almost 300,000 votes were cast in Oklahoma County in last year’s Presidential race. Roberts wrote that his constituents “have stat-ed over and over again that transparency is a must in our republic and every citizen should be confident that their vote counts as one.” He said he is considering filing legislation next year to create “a more comprehensive au-dit process to protect future elections.”
Ziriax informed Roberts that the State Election Board is already testing audit techniques “and we plan to implement a system of random post-election audits for the 2022 elections.”
‘NO EVIDENCE OF PERVASIVE FRAUD’ IN OKLAHOMA
Furthermore, “There is no controversy surrounding the 2020 General Election in Oklahoma” and “no credible suspicion or evidence of pervasive fraud” in this state,” Ziriax noted. Evidence suggests that voter suppression is “virtually non-existent in our state,” he wrote.
A total of 49 instances of alleged voter irregularities in 14 counties occurred during the November 3, 2020, general election, and were reported to the Oklahoma State Election Board. Those included a case in Comanche County in which an absentee ballot was submitted after the voter’s death.
Payne County reported two cases in which absentee ballots were returned by persons other than the voters themselves, contrary to state law. And in Haskell County, a mother refused to vote in-dependently of her daughter and became disruptive, poll workers reported.
Elsewhere in the state, Oklahoma County reported 19 cases of voter “fraud”; Tulsa County, eight cases; Pittsburg and Muskogee counties, four cases each; Cleveland, Delaware and Okmulgee counties, two cases each; and Grady, Mayes, Osage and Sequoyah counties, one case each.
“All of these alleged crimes involved voters who voted twice, unless otherwise noted,” said Misha Mohr, public information officer for the State Election Board. “I should also add that many times, alleged ‘double voters’ are elderly citizens who don’t remember submitting their absentee ballots and show up at the polls on Election Day to vote.”
The Presidential election received the most votes in the general election last November: 1,560,699 votes in Oklahoma. Those 49 irregularities constituted .0031% of the total votes cast in that race – 31 ten-thousandths of 1 percent.
Then-President Trump received 65.37% of the Oklahoma vote in his bid for re-election; Republican Sen. Jim Inhofe, 62.9%; Republican Congressman Kevin Hern, 63.7%; Republican Rep. Markwayne Mullin, 75%; Republican Rep. Frank Lucas, 78.5%; Republican Congressman Tom Cole, 67.8%; Republican Stephanie Bice bested the Democrat incumbent District 5 Rep. Kendra Horn, 52% to 48%; and Republican Corporation Commissioner Todd Hiett won re-election with 76.1% of the statewide vote.
‘CLEAR SIGNS OF ELECTION FRAUD,’ ROBERTS CLAIMS
“There were clear signs of election fraud in various other states around the country such as Arizona, Georgia, and Pennsylvania,” Roberts claimed.
However, the Georgia Secretary of State’s office audit-ed the Peach State’s election results three times, and none of them produced evidence of widespread fraud.
“Our law enforcement officers and Secretary of State’s office spent literally thousands of hours examining ballots in Fulton County and other counties trying to track these kinds of claims down, and so far we’ve seen nothing give any merit to it,” Gabriel Sterling, the Republican chief operating officer and chief financial officer for the Georgia Secretary of State’s office, told CNN.
Lawsuits challenging Georgia’s 2020 election results failed, and the state’s Republican Secretary of State has repeatedly refuted claims of voter fraud.
A Pennsylvania state senator sent letters to three counties earlier this month, asking them to turn over election materials by July 31.
The legislator said the audit would not be a recount but a comprehensive “forensic investigation” in which ballots would be analyzed to see whether they were filled in by a human, voting machines would be examined and signatures scrutinized, among other efforts.
The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that the materials requested are “sprawling” and include ballots, voting machines, vote-counting equipment, mail-in ballot envelopes and mail-in ballot applications.
Despite allegations to the contrary, no massive fraud was detected in Arizona, either. Nevertheless, the Arizona State Senate launched a similar election audit by subpoenaing election materials from Maricopa County officials, which were then turned over to private companies performing the audit. Officials in Maricopa County announced they will replace their voting machines – at a cost to the taxpayers of several million dollars – because of concerns that the “audit” has compromised the machines’ security.
NO CANDIDATES IN 2020 GENERAL ELECTION SOUGHT A RECOUNT
In his letter to Roberts, Ziriax pointed out that “not a single state or federal candidate in Oklahoma exercised the right to request a re-count” after the general election last year – a “strong sign” that Oklahoma candidates, from the top of the ballot to the bottom, “trusted the veracity and outcome of our elections.”
Recounts in a state Senate runoff in southeast Oklahoma last year, and a City Council election in Edmond this year, “confirmed the absentee, in-person absentee, and in-person Election Day results” in those elections, Ziriax wrote.
Oklahoma’s election system and its voting devices “are among the most accurate and secure anywhere in the entire world,” the Election Board Secretary asserted.
Southwest Ledger left a message for Roberts with his legislative aide at the State Capitol at 3:13 p.m. Tuesday, but Roberts never responded.
EVEN A RECOUNT WILL BE COSTLY
HB 2564 goes into effect November 1 this year.
That bill decrees that any candidate or individual who requests a manual recount of ballots must submit a petition accompanied by a cashier’s check or certified check totaling $600 for each 3,000 ballots “or fraction thereof” to be retabulated in each affected county.
If a candidate or individual requests an electronic recount, the petition must be accompanied by a check totaling $600 for the first 3,000 ballots and $300 for each additional 5,000 ballots “to be recounted for each affected county.”
Any petition for a recount that is filed with the State Election Board must be accompanied by a cashier’s check for $300 in addition to the amounts previously listed.
The Governor or the Attorney General could request a recount on any state question if sufficient funds are available to pay for it. Available funding means having at least $250,000 in the State Question Recount Revolving Fund on Election Day.
A recount on State Question 802, Medicaid expansion, would have cost Oklahoma’s counties about $181,000, Ziriax said. Almost 674,600 ballots were counted in that June 2020 election. A recount on State Question 805, a criminal justice reform proposal that focused on sentence enhancements, would have cost counties almost $330,000, Ziriax said; that election last November drew more than 1.5 million voters.
Roberts requested a forensic audit of the votes tabulated in the Presidential election last November in Oklahoma County and two other counties.
According to the State Election Board, votes counted in some of Oklahoma’s 77 counties in last year’s Presidential election included: Oklahoma County, 297,740; Tulsa Count y, 266,678; Cleveland, 119,718; Canadian, 61,940; Rogers, 44,553; Comanche, 35,631; Wagoner, 35,338; Creek, 30,505; Payne, 29,643; Garfield, 22,430; and Cherokee, 17,714.