Brent VanNorman Officially Files For Recount Of Tulsa's Mayoral Election

Tulsa mayoral candidate Brent VanNorman's team has officially filed the paperwork for a recount of Tuesday's election.

The results showed Monroe Nichols receiving 18,729 votes, Karen Keith with 18,457, and VanNorman with 18,019.

VanNorman is requesting a manual, hand recount of the ballots. The recount will happen at 9 a.m. at the Tulsa County Courthouse on Thursday, September 5.

In an interview with Dave Davis on News On 6, he discussed the reasons behind his decision to request a recount.

Dave: So why are you calling for a recount?

VanNorman: Well, the election was razor-thin. There were 710 votes between the top vote-getter, Monroe Nichols, and myself, 438 votes between Karen Keith and myself. With over 56,000 votes, my supporters started asking me the day after, are you going to seek a recount? And enough people came forward to say, "We think there are issues that justify that", and we finally said, OK.

Dave: Do you have doubt about the results?

VanNorman: You know, in a recount, most of them are not successful. There are some that have been. So, certainly, we don't have any assurance of that, but we just want to make sure there's election integrity. We want to make sure that all the votes are counted and that the true results are determined. So, there's been a groundswell of activity to do this, and people came to me asking me to do it. They said they'd fund it if I would do it. So, over 70 people, in a course of about five or six hours, came forward and put the money up for it.

Dave: So it is a fully funded recount. Tell me about the process. So what do you have to do to file? Because you haven't yet filed? When are you going to file? And how does that all work?

VanNorman: Yeah, so we'll file today. It's a very fairly simple form. It's a one-page fill-in-the-blanks on it, because you have options as to what you want to have recounted, what type of recount you want. So we're going to ask for a manual recount of all ballots. Early absentee ballots, those that voted in advance, and then same-day count as well.

Dave: The manual recount, we'll talk a little bit about that because you can do an electronic machine recount. You can do a manual ecount, but you are choosing the manual.

VanNorman: We are choosing the manual recount, which will take a bit longer, but certainly is very detailed, and we can have observers there. So, I think it will be very thorough.

Dave: So, this is something, this recount. Were there doubts in your mind that you should do the recount? You mentioned it was the day after the election, and you didn't announce that you were going to do the recount until yesterday. It just kind of people kept asking you about it.

VanNorman: Correct. Yeah, we kept hearing stories of issues that may have existed out there that could change the outcome. And so I, you know, I didn't observe when I was voting. There were no irregularities that I observed. But then when the people started talking, we determined, OK, if the people believe there's an issue here, we ought to resolve that. We ought to come to some definitive conclusion, and this will put all those issues at rest, I believe.

Dave: If the results hold up, what do you plan on doing after that?

VanNorman: Well, you know, still letting the dust settle a little bit, I want to stay involved. Initially, I want to help those folks that are running in November and come alongside them and do whatever I can to support them. And, you know, after that, we'll see what doors open.