OKLAHOMA CITY — In the 2024 presidential election, 290,000 of the more than 1.5 million Oklahomans who voted cast their ballot through early in-person voting.
Early in-person voting, called in-person absentee voting in Oklahoma, along with mail-in ballots are intended to make voting accessible for people who may not be able to make it to the polls on Election Day.
State Sen. Mary Boren, D-Norman, organized an interim study on early voting in Oklahoma due to concerns about long wait times for voters.
'I did introduce some bills this last session to try to figure out ways to shorten the lines,' Boren said as she introduced her interim study to the committee.
She said she doesn't expect voting to be as easy as picking up something at a convenience store, but that long wait times can dissuade voters from going to the polls. Boren also said she had concerns about lack of standardized training for poll workers in Oklahoma.
Boren said she wanted this study to find out, “specifically what does the Legislature need to do to support, if you all say, ‘hey, we would benefit from another early voting site. What is the responsibility of the Legislature with funding, resources or regulations to make that easier for you all?’” Paul Ziriax, the chief of the State Election Board, gave a broad overview of early in-person voting in Oklahoma. Early voting in Oklahoma lasts two to four days, depending on the kind of election. Statewide and federal elections have four days of early voting.
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, early voting across the U.S. for federal elections ranges in length from three to 46 days. Most early voting lasts an average of 20 days — much longer than Oklahoma’s longest early voting period.
Every county in Oklahoma is required to have at least one early voting site. Ziriax said only around 15 out of the 77 counties in Oklahoma have more than one early voting site. To have multiple early voting sites, state law requires that a county have more than 25,000 voters or an area of more than 1,500 square miles.
Early voting sites in Oklahoma are also required to have at least one absentee voting board consisting of one Republican and one Democrat. Their wages add to the cost of printing out ballots and setting up early voting sites for the State Election Board. Overall, for state and federal elections, early in-person voting costs around $100,000 per day for the State Election Board. As for county and municipal elections, “The entity for which the election is being conducted is responsible for covering all costs related to the election, including ballots, precinct officials, the absentee voting board, polling places, postage related to the mailing of absentee ballots, etc.,” the board told Southwest Ledger.
Ziriax said Oklahomans are voting early. He said last year Oklahomans cast more early ballots in the 2024 presidential election than ever before.
Cleveland County Election Board Secretary Bryant Rains said that Cleveland County operated four early in-person voting sites during the 2024 election and now have plans to operate six next year. Rains said they tried to plan sites based on population centers. They only open a couple of early voting sites for smaller local elections, though for the primary, runoff and general election all six sites will be open.
Tulsa County Election Board Secretary Gwen Freeman said her experience with early in-person voting sites is different from Rains. In Tulsa, they only have two in-person early voter sites and have difficulty finding sites with the capacity to serve the county.
Freeman also said early voting is different from Election Day voting because it is not precinct- based. On Election Day, voters go to their local precinct. Poll workers at that site have a paper list of all the registered voters in the precinct.
Early in-person voting is not precinct-based, so poll workers must search for registered voters on computers as it would be impractical to print out a list of the 400,000 registered voters in Tulsa County. It can also be difficult for counties to predict the number of printed ballots needed at an early voting site.
Oklahoma County Election Board Assistant Secretary Tuesday Sanders shared similar troubles from Oklahoma County. Finding large enough sites with enough parking has been particularly difficult as the board needs full access to a site for a whole day before early voting begins. Many churches have been unable to accommodate this as it interferes with Wednesday night services.
After the presentations, lawmakers asked questions about the difficulties faced by all the counties.
Freeman shared that because Oklahoma law requires at least one poll worker be from each of the two largest political parties in the state, she has had difficulty finding precinct officials or poll workers.
'If the two major political parties followed state law when it comes to precinct officials, there would not be precinct official shortages,” said Ziriax. He said that statute requires county political parties to submit lists of possible poll workers to the county election board with at least three times the number of potential officials for the number of precincts in the county. Ziriax said there is no enforcement mechanism for this statute and so many county political parties do not submit lists.