Audit confirms Oklahoma's election results
A post-election review has confirmed the results of both the primary runoff and general elections in Oklahoma.
Of the 31 races, and thousands of ballots re-tabulated, election officials found only two instances where the audit figures differed slightly from the certified results. The audit included results from federal, state, judicial and county elections.
In one Okmulgee County precinct, a voter apparently put their "I Voted" sticker on their ballot before feeding it into the machine on Election Day, causing their pick for corporation commissioner to not be counted.
During an audit in Johnston County, officials discovered that one ballot was missing from a sealed transfer case containing Election Day ballots. After recounting the ballots from that precinct multiple times and conducting a thorough search, the ballot could not be found.
"While the ballot was not recovered, there appears to be no evidence of intentional wrongdoing by the precinct officials," states the audit report. "The most likely explanation is that the precinct officials failed to properly secure the ballot in the transfer case after the polls closed."
The report noted Johnston County's election board secretary will provide a refresher training course to precinct officials to make sure proper procedures are followed in the future.
An audit of votes in Harper County showed two provisional ballots were mistakenly classified as mailed absentee votes, but the error did not effect the tabulation. Like in Johnston County, the local election board secretary will conduct refresher training.
Of the 11 races sampled from the Aug. 23 primary runoff results, the certified totals perfectly matched the manual audit count.
The release of the audit results on Monday matched the outcome of Oklahoma's first post-election audit, which was conducted after the 2022 primary election.
That audit, released in August, also confirmed the outcome of the election. No discrepancies were found.
"Post-election audits add an additional layer of transparency and security to Oklahoma elections and election officials are thankful that the state Legislature enacted a law to allow them," said Paul Ziriax, secretary of the Oklahoma State Election Board. "These post-election audits and recounts are the latest in a long line of evidence confirming the accuracy and reliability of Oklahoma’s paper-based voting system."
These were the first tabulation audits performed under a law approved by the Oklahoma Legislature in 2019. The law gave the state Election Board secretary the authority to direct county election boards to conduct post-election audits. The state Election Board originally planned to start conducting post-election audits during the 2020 election cycle, but the development of policies and procedures to guide the process was delayed during the pandemic.
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Audit confirms Oklahoma's election results
