Tulsa County Election Board Explains Absentee Ballot Processing

The Tulsa County Election Board is anticipating a record number of people voting absentee this election cycle. According to Election Board officials, a system is in place to make sure each ballot remains private and secured.

There are two ways an absentee ballot can be turned into the election board; by mailing it back or through hand delivery. The election board said that 400-500 ballots walk in each day.

Dedicated staff members are working to make sure the hand-delivered ballots are filled out correctly, as an incorrectly completed absentee ballot could be rejected.

After it is turned into a staff member, it is put into a lockbox. When the lockbox is filled up, the ballot is transferred to a larger bin, which is where the mailed-in ballots directly go.

Election Board officials said the bins quickly fill up with ballots and are stored in a locked room until it is time to begin processing them. As of Wednesday, there were nearly eight trash can-sized bins filled with thousands of absentee ballots.

The bins have three different locks on them and can only be opened by the governing board. No one person has all three keys.

The board consists of Tulsa County Election Board Secretary Gwen Freeman, as well as one Democrat and Republican representative. To begin processing the absentee ballots, an official election board meeting consisting of the three members must take place.

The board sifts through the absentee ballot packets to make sure the affidavit is signed, or a government-issued identification is included. Failure to include one of the two is the most common way to get a ballot rejected.

After a ballot is approved, it is put into a large pile of waiting to go through the counting machine. The ballots and affidavits are separated so nobody knows how a person voted.

The counting machine can process up to 200 ballots at once.

The board only has access to the number of ballots that went through the machine, and stress they do not know any results until election night. After ballots go through the machine, they are secured into a vault that can only be accessed by the Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office.

“It’s extremely safe to vote absentee,” said Gwen Freeman, Tulsa County Election Board Secretary. “We have a very good program in place, we follow protocols, it’s legislatively governed.”

On election night, the machine sends the results directly to the Oklahoma State Election Board.

The Tulsa County Election Board anticipates processing more than 100,000 absentee ballots. The board will begin the process as early as Friday to get ahead of the large number.