TULSA —
Update: The Tulsa County Election Board completed the recount in the Tulsa City Council District 3 election Thursday afternoon. Election officials said candidates Jackie Dutton and Susan Frederick lost three votes each due to overvotes.
An overvote occurs when a voter marks more than one candidate in the same race on their ballot.
Jackie Dutton remains the winner of the election, the election board said.
Officials began the recount in the mayoral election Thursday and said it would continue Friday.
Original Story:
Despite extremely long odds, two candidates who lost their recent elections in Tulsa filed demands for recounts, and Thursday that process began at the future home of the Tulsa County Election Board.
Mayoral candidate Brent VanNorman lost to Monroe Nichols and Karen Keith by margins of 728 and 436 votes, respectively.
[Precinct official Hugh Lackley discusses the recount process with KRMG reporter Russell Mills]
He has stated that his motivation for challenging those results was to essentially ease the public’s mind about the accuracy of elections in Oklahoma.
Just days ago, State Election Board Secretary Paul Ziriax noted that in the June 18th statewide primaries, random precincts chosen for manual recounts in 76 of the state’s 77 counties resulted in confirming the initial vote totals, with 100% accuracy.
In the 77th county, a manual recount had already been conducted in a sheriff’s race - which also confirmed the results were precisely correct.
KRMG has been unable to document any election in the history of the state which was overturned by a recount, even those with razor-thin margins of one or two votes, and in the recent Sheriff’s race in Carter County, an actual tie.
After reviewing provisional ballots and conducting a manual recount in June, that race was determined by drawing the winner’s name by lot, in accordance with state law.
The Tulsa county recounts will have to be conducted fairly quickly, as election officials say they have to have the correct names for the ballots submitted to the printers by Tuesday, September 10th in order for them to be mailed to out-of-state and military voters by September 20th.
For a fairly detailed explanation of how the process works, here’s part of a conversation between our reporter and Hugh Rackley, a precinct official participating in the recount process.