Gov. Kevin Stitt did a good thing last week when he amended and extended an executive order declaring a COVID-19 emergency in Oklahoma.

It is a very real emergency, and it deserves strong action from the governor ... stronger than we have seen.

The primary effect of the governor’s Friday action was to allow Oklahoma citizens to vote in the Nov. 3 general election by absentee ballot without the unnecessary notarization of their ballots. During a pandemic, the notary requirement needlessly exposes voters to infection without doing anything meaningful to prevent voter fraud.

To vote by absentee ballot in November, registered voters need only photocopy an appropriate government-issued ID card and return the copy with their ballot.

That will make the third consecutive election that the photocopy process has applied to absentee ballots. There has been no upsurge in allegations of voter fraud associated with it.

Surely, the lesson to the Oklahoma Legislature is that it needs to make the photocopy process permanent. Current statute only allows the photocopy process to be used in elections during 2020 and then only with an executive order from the governor.

Two Democratic Party groups are challenging the law in federal court. Attorney General Mike Hunter’s defense of the notary requirement is disappointing because it seeks to disenfranchise voters who aren’t willing to risk their health to exercise their constitutional right to vote.

Now that the governor has acted to protect the health of voters in November, we call on him to protect the health of all Oklahomans now. The recommendations of President Donald Trump’s task force on COVID-19 and the state’s public health statistics make is clear that — at the very least — the state needs to require masks of people in public places in counties with high infection rates. That includes Tulsa County.

Oklahoma has recorded more than 58,000 COVID-19 cases and more than 800 deaths, according to Oklahoma State Department of Health data.

More than 11,500 of those cases and more than 130 deaths of the deaths have come from Tulsa County. Tulsa has a mask ordinance, which had an immediate and obvious effect, but some suburbs have buckled under misguided political pressure, endangering the public.

Oklahoma has the eighth highest rate for positive coronavirus test results and the 12th highest number of new daily cases per capita. Both numbers are going the wrong way — up.

We say it again, Gov. Stitt: Do your job; protect the people.

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