New Oklahoma Law Aims To Expedite Removal Of Deceased Voters From Roll

A new Oklahoma law aims to speed up the process of removing someone’s name from the voter rolls once they’ve died. The secretary of the Rogers County election board is hopeful the law will only strengthen election integrity.

House Bill 1950 went into effect on January 1, requiring the state election board secretary to get death records from the Social Security Administration and alert local election boards if there is a match to a registered voter.

“Rather than it taking maybe a couple years or longer for them to get off, now we will probably have them off in just a couple months,” said Julie Dermody, secretary of the Rogers County Election Board.

Dermody says each election board has 30 days to get a voter’s name scrubbed from the roll after getting notification of the person’s death. The state health department already sends a monthly list of death notifications, but Dermody is hopeful more information will come into the office faster.

“We have a lot of people that have the same kind of name, so we want to make sure that we have those names correct and the right birthdates,” she said. “When we remove somebody, we are removing that person who has passed away.”

Dermody says Oklahoma already has strong election integrity, but this law will only make it stronger.

“Everybody wants to make sure that our elections are secure,” said Dermody. “That’s one of the things we want to do, too.”

If you have the responsibility of letting the election board know if somebody has passed, Dermody says you can walk into your local election board office and tell the staff there or have a funeral director do it on your behalf.