About 200 New Tulsa County Poll Workers Help Staff Election Day During COVID-19 Pandemic

Tulsa County voters made their voices heard while keeping their distance Tuesday, with a limited number of people allowed at each precinct.

"Twice today I've had to stop at the door and tell people, 'Can you stay outside? There's too many people in there,’” Sharon Bishop-Baldwin said.

Bishop-Baldwin is the inspector, or the person "in charge," of the polling location at the United Pentecostal Church of Broken Arrow. This is the third election she has worked.

"To be the veteran and to be on my third election is a little bit nerve-wracking,” she said.

The other two workers at this polling place are brand new at the job. The Tulsa County Election Board said about 200 people stepped up to become poll workers for this election and the board is looking for hundreds more for the general election on November 3rd.

"When we realized that we were gonna lose a lot of our precinct officials because of their age or because of health risks, we had a really neat sort of rallying sort of attitude with a lot of folks,” Tulsa County Election Board Secretary Gwen Freeman said.

Freeman said early voting numbers were down by about 1,000 voters compared to the last primary election in 2016, but requests for absentee ballots saw a "dramatic increase," with more than 30,000 requests in this election compared to 6,400 in the last primary.

"It takes more time here at the election board. Obviously, we're not set up for a huge amount of absentee votes. But we're making it work,” Freeman said.

If you voted absentee and are looking for reassurance the board received your ballot in the mail, you can easily track the progress of your ballot on the OK Voter Portal.

The polls close at 7:00 p.m. Tuesday.