A judge on Tuesday cleared the way for Grant Miller to become Tulsa’s next District 5 city councilor.
Tulsa County District Judge Doug Drummond denied City Councilor Mykey Arthrell’s petition alleging voting irregularities and ordered the Tulsa County Election Board to certify Miller as the winner of the election.
“In sum, more than 10,014 qualified voters journeyed to their respective precincts on November 8, 2022, and elected Miller by a slim margin to be the next District 5 City Councilor,” Drummond wrote. “To void that election, Arthrell must show that the irregularity has made it impossible to determine with mathematical certainty which candidate won. He has fallen short of that standard.”
Arthrell said he was disappointed and surprised by the judge’s decision
“It felt like everything had kind of made sense for what I was saying, which was that there was an irregularity, and to have a ruling that denies that is a surprise, a shock,” Arthrell said.
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Miller said the decision shows democracy prevails.
“After hearing the facts, the court has reaffirmed what the citizens of Tulsa made clear on election day,” Miller said. “Oklahoma has a tried-and-true system for initiating recounts and hearing irregularities. All sides have the opportunity to be heard in an expeditious manner and we have witnessed the quality of our system today.”
Miller said he took the unprecedented step of requesting a recount — which resulted in his lead narrowing from 27 to 24 votes — to ensure that District 5 residents knew their voices were heard and their votes counted.
“Importantly, they must know that our elections in the state of Oklahoma are fair and free of interference,” Miller said. “I am glad the court was able to build confidence in this important institution with its opinion today.”
The Tulsa County Election Board is scheduled to certify the District 5 election results at 1 p.m. Thursday. The vote count stands at 5,069 votes for Miller and 5,045 for Arthrell.
The new class of city councilors will be sworn in Monday.
Arthrell challenged the election results after reports that at least 29 people in Precincts 77 and 377 did not receive City Council ballots on Election Day. Unofficial results from the Tulsa County Election Board that day showed Miller up 28 votes; the margin of victory later narrowed to 24 after provisional ballots were counted and a manual recount requested by Miller was completed.
The two-day hearing before Drummond focused on how many voters in Precincts 77 and 377, which share a polling place and poll workers, did not receive City Council ballots on Election Day, and whether that affected the outcome of the election.
Drummond’s eight-page ruling states that a candidate challenging election results must do more than show “mere probability” that it is impossible to determine with mathematical certainty which candidate won the election.
“This high standard is required because, as a matter of public policy, courts indulge every presumption in favor of the validity of an election,” Drummond wrote.
During a two-day hearing, Tulsa County Election Board Secretary Gwen Freeman testified that her office had found that 35 people in Precincts 77 and 377 had not received a ballot, based on annotations made by poll workers on the voting registries signed by voters.
Precinct workers were instructed to mark a “T” next to voters who received a City Council ballot, and a “G” next to voters who received general election ballots, Freeman testified.
But under cross-examination, Freeman acknowledged that there was no way for her office to be certain who received a City Council ballot and who didn’t.
In his order, Drummond cites that uncertainty as crucial to his ruling. Miller’s attorney had made the same argument before the court.
“The record shows that the accuracy of the Registries is suspect,” Drummond wrote, adding that Freeman herself described the registries as flawed.
“She testified that there is ‘no way’ she could rely on the Registries to determine who received (or did not receive) a Tulsa Ballot,” the order states. “Her testimony strongly suggests the Registries’ veracity is questionable at best.”
Arthrell’s attorney, Taylor Burke, argued that the uncertainty surrounding the number of City Council ballots not handed out supported his claim that voting irregularities had occurred. Burke also stressed that state law states voting registries are to be considered the best evidence of a person having voted.
In his order, Drummond states that Oklahoma law recognizes not every election “irregularity” will invalidate an election.
Drummond also takes note of the fact that Miller entered voting precincts on Election Day to investigate reports of voters not receiving ballots.
“Although clearly he should not have done this, no evidence was presented as to whether (or how) his actions impacted any of the qualified electors,” Drummond wrote.
Meanwhile, the Tulsa County District Attorney’s Office continues to look into whether poll workers at Precincts 77 and 377 violated any election laws when they failed to hand out City Council ballots.
A spokeswoman for the DA’s Office said Tuesday the investigation is expected to be completed by the end of the week.
In a press conference on Election Day, Tulsa County Sheriff Vic Regalado said his investigators were told poll workers at Precinct 77 included two Democrats and a Republican and that the precinct judge who gave the instruction not to give ballots to Republicans was a Democrat.
According to Regalado, poll workers told investigators that 29 voters at Precinct 77 had not received City Council ballots in the first hour of Election Day.
Speaking at the same press conference, Freeman said her office had determined that 19 Republicans, seven Democrats, four independents and one Libertarian — for a total of 31 voters — did not receive a City Council ballot.
Arthrell later described the sheriff’s press conference as a publicity stunt intended to affect the outcome of the election.
Arthrell is not the first Tulsa City Council candidate to challenge the results of an election.
In 2004, the District 3 contest between David Patrick and Roscoe Turner ended in a recount that left Patrick the winner by four votes. But Turner filed a lawsuit alleging voting irregularities, and a court ended up ordering another election, which Turner won.
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