Comanche County District Attorney Kyle Cabelka asked the judge to throw out the results of the Republican runoff election for Comanche County sheriff, stating in a court filing that it’s impossible to determine with mathematical certainty which candidate won.
Cabelka said he’s concerned about the results after reports of Democrats and Independents casting Republican ballots in the closed primary. State election board officials filed a response dismissing Cabelka’s claims that the results can’t be trusted.
State Election Board Secretary Paul Ziriax notes in a court filing that Cabelka lacks standing to even file such a lawsuit because he is not a candidate in the race in question. He also points to the district attorney disregarding a statutory process for contesting elections and not having evidence showing there were enough irregularities to affect the outcome of the race.
Court records by Cabelka show at least five cases of ballots cast by voters who were not registered as Republicans. Runoff winner Michael Merritt won the contest by 628 votes over his opponent Andy Moon. He’ll face Democrat David Stroud in the general.
State law requires the number of irregularities to prove that it is impossible to prove with mathematical certainty which candidate should be certified as the Republican nominee for the general election.
Given that the margin of victory is 628 votes, Ziriax’s response says the threshold to deny certification is not met. Comanche County District Court Judge Jay Walker agreed and ordered the election be certified.
And while Merritt, who won, is pleased with the ruling, Cabelka said he still questions the decision.
When Cabelka inquired with local and state election officials about the problem, he said he was met with “absolute confusion.”
“And even a kind of minimization that was being done on the issue, it concerned me and that concern just got exaggerated and exacerbated the further along we went in the process,” he said.
It’s clear now, Cabelka says, that election officials didn’t know how many improper votes were cast in the election. And when they told him, “it happens all the time,” he said it opened his eyes to how elections are run in Oklahoma.
He said he learned officials statewide certify every election despite knowing small miscounts and other issues occur every time.
“I just felt as a citizen, that's not right. We deserve better in our election process and that we should all have confidence and absolute confidence in it,” Cabelka said. “And I don't.”So he sued his own county’s election officials – and the state’s – so he could put them on blast and learn more in the process.
He said he could not stand by while state election board secretary Paul Ziriax posted about a 100% voter verification rate in June's primaries, only for there to be a problem with the runoffs.
“From what I've seen, I felt like the public should have been made aware of not only this election but apparently, according to the officials, every election is handled in the same way,” Cabelka said.
Amy Sims is the secretary of the Comanche County Election Board and was the primary defendant in the lawsuit. She declined to comment on the facts of what happened that election night and how it was handled without the state’s lawyer to help her. Not long ago, she said, Cabelka, who would be her lawyer if he wasn’t the one suing her, told her not to talk to the media. She deferred to the state election board or the assistant attorney general on the case for comment.
State election board spokesperson Misha Mohr said the Aug. 27 Comanche County Sheriff runoff results will be certified in the coming days, per the judge’s orders.
This report was produced by the Oklahoma Public Media Exchange, a collaboration of public media organizations. Help support collaborative journalism by donating at the link at the top of this webpage.
