Election board secretary explains counting procedures. MATT BARNARD/Tulsa World
A law passed in 2013 means Oklahomans today aren’t still waiting for Tuesday’s election results.
Because of what seemed, at the time, to be an unusually large number of mail-in ballots for the 2012 general election, the Legislature put into statute a procedure for allowing county election boards to begin processing mail-in absentee ballots ahead of election day.
That overwhelming deluge eight years ago amounted to about 64,000 mail ballots statewide. This year Tulsa County received almost that many by itself, and the statewide total of 280,799 accounted for nearly 1 in 5 of the record 1,558,627 presidential ballots cast in the state.
Yet, despite power outages at some Oklahoma City polling places, all of the state’s 1,948 precincts had reported by 12:30 a.m. Wednesday. Most results were in well before then.
That change in the law, and a requirement that mail ballots be received by county elections by 7 p.m. on the final day of voting, are two big reasons why poll workers weren’t still sifting through ballots on Wednesday, or even later, as they are in some other states, said Oklahoma State Election Board Secretary Paul Ziriax.
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“It used to be we couldn’t even begin scanning the ballots until 10 a.m. on election day,” said Ziriax. “I granted blanket permission for every county to begin early as long as they notified us. In the bigger counties, they’ve been processing absentee ballots for weeks.”
That’s been the case in Tulsa County. Election Board Secretary Gwen Freeman said about the only mail ballots left to process on Tuesday were those received that day.
“That meant working weekends,” said Freeman. “That meant working 12-hour days. We made the decision early on that we weren’t going to be in the situation that on Election Day, if mountains of absentee ballots came in the mail, it wouldn’t delay election results.”
Ziriax said another important element was the state’s decision to modernize its voting system eight years ago. That allows for quicker, more secure transmission of data and compilation of final results.
Ziriax said Election Day passed with relatively few hitches except for the lingering power outages from last week’s ice storm in Oklahoma City and the usual electioneering complaints. The latter usually involves people wearing campaign attire within 300 feet of a polling place.
The only outstanding ballots after Tuesday night were those cast provisionally, mostly by people who didn’t appear on voter rolls or didn’t have proper identification.
Freeman said less than 0.5% of Tulsa County absentee ballots were rejected, and said there was no indication of fraud, which has been a concern of some.
The Oklahoma State Election Board expects to certify the final election results next Tuesday.
VoteCast post-election roundup
VoteCast post-election roundup
Biden got more votes than any candidate ever
That's mainly because overall voter turnout spiked this year, as an estimated 68.2% of the US electorate cast ballots. This chart is current as of Nov. 4, 2020, and will not update. Sources: AP Election Research Group; The American Presidency Project.
Police and pandemic expose racial differences
A summer of protests over racial inequality in policing exposed sharply divergent views on racism, while the coronavirus pandemic laid bare racial disparities in health care. Both affected how voters cast their ballots.
Biden voters almost universally said racism is a serious problem in U.S. society and in policing, including about 7 in 10 who called it “very” serious. A slim majority of Trump voters — who are overwhelming white — called racism a serious problem in U.S. society, and just under half said it was a serious problem in policing.
There also were sharply divergent experiences with the pandemic. About 4 in 10 Black voters and about 3 in 10 Latino voters said they lost a family member or close friend to the virus, while just about 1 in 10 white voters said the same.
Latino and Black voters also were more likely to lose household income because of the pandemic.
Those voters fall into Biden’s column, meaning his voters were somewhat more likely than Trump voters to say they’ve felt the impact in at least one of the ways the survey asked about, 73% to 62%.
Trump supporters distrust the vote-counting process
Trump for months has sought to sow doubts about vote-counting — especially of mail-in ballots, which take longer to count and tend to favor Democrats — claiming without evidence that the process was ripe for fraud and that Democrats would try to steal the election.
The survey suggest his voters were listening.
Trump supporters were more likely to distrust the vote-counting process, though voters for both candidates had their doubts. About 7 in 10 voters were confident that votes would be counted accurately, though only about a quarter of voters were “very confident." Almost 8 in 10 Biden voters were confident, compared with about 6 in 10 Trump supporters.
Trump voters felt more confident about another democratic institution that has already played a role in this year's election: the Supreme Court. The high court, along with lower courts, handled lawsuits in recent weeks about the count of mail-in ballots in several states. That was before conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett filled her seat on the Supreme Court after the Republican-controlled Senate sped through her confirmation just before the election.
About 9 in 10 Trump voters were at least somewhat confident in the high court to be fair and impartial in its decisions, compared with about half as many Biden voters.
We pretty much knew all along who'd get our vote
Longstanding partisan divides have defined the past four years, explaining why roughly three-quarters of voters said they’ve known all along who they were supporting in this election. VoteCast shows stark differences between Trump and Biden supporters — on the virus, the economy, even on football.
As U.S. coronavirus cases rise, claiming more than 232,000 lives, a majority of Biden voters — about 6 in 10 — said the pandemic was the most important issue facing the country. And Biden voters overwhelmingly said the federal government should prioritize limiting the spread of the virus — even if that damages the economy.
But Trump voters were more focused on the economy. About half of Trump voters called the economy and jobs the top issue facing the nation, while only 1 in 10 Biden voters named it most important.
The two groups did not agree on the state of the economy, either. Trump voters remain adamant that the economy is in good shape: About three-quarters call national economic conditions excellent or good. About 8 in 10 Biden voters call them not so good or poor.
Partisanship even seemed to cloud views on football among voters in many states, including Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio. When the coronavirus threatened the Big Ten's college football season, Trump campaigned on ensuring the games would be played. Not surprisingly, across eight states, voters who approved of the Big Ten playing this year supported Trump over Biden. Those who saw it as a mistake were more likely to back Biden.
This survey's backers ranged from Fox News to NPR
AP VoteCast is a survey of the American electorate conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago for Fox News, NPR, PBS NewsHour, Univision News, USA Today Network, The Wall Street Journal and The Associated Press.
The survey of 110,485 voters was conducted for eight days, concluding as polls closed. Interviews were conducted in English and Spanish. The survey combines a random sample of registered voters drawn from state voter files; self-identified registered voters using NORC’s probability based AmeriSpeak panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population; and self-identified registered voters selected from nonprobability online panels. The margin of sampling error for voters is estimated to be plus or minus 0.4 percentage points. Find more details about AP VoteCast’s methodology at https://ap.org/votecast.
