Oklahomans who waited until the last day to register to vote in the Nov. 3 general election hit a brick wall at the state election board Friday, where the voter portal wasn’t working.
That left would-be voters with few options, except downloading and printing a form and getting it to a post office before closing time to meet the deadline with an Oct. 9 postmark.
Oklahoma Watch tested the system after the Democratic Party office reported receiving about 20 calls from frustrated Oklahomans. After clicking “Submit,” the site returned an error message saying the voter portal couldn't communicate with Service Oklahoma to verify the registrant’s information.
Democratic Party Chair Erin Brewer said the party’s office had received about 20 calls by Friday afternoon.
“Cyndi Munson’s office was also getting calls saying the same thing,” Brewer said. “The two offices were communicating and coordinating how they could direct voters to solutions.”
Joe Hartman, Munson’s gubernatorial campaign manager, said they received 30-40 complaints from people who couldn't register.
“Even if it’s one or two people that can’t register, that’s very problematic,” said Brett Sharp, a political science professor at the University of Central Oklahoma. “It erodes the public’s trust in our election system. Even a technical problem can undermine the public’s trust.”
Multiple attempts to reach State Election Board Spokeswoman Misha Mohr went unanswered. Oklahoma Watch also couldn't reach the Republican Party office or anyone on gubernatorial candidate Mike Mazzei’s campaign to ask whether they had received similar complaints.
Oklahoma State University Political Science Professor Seth McKee said the state should give voters another chance.
“If, in good faith, you’re trying to register on the last day and can’t because of a glitch, the state should extend the registration date,” McKee said.
Oklahoma isn’t the only state that has struggled with online voter registrations. Last month, a glitch in Texas’ system delayed registrations getting to county election boards. Votebeat Texas reported last week that six months before the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Secretary of State’s Office were forced to send hundreds of thousands of backlogged voter registration records to local county officials, both agencies were warned that records were getting lost in DPS’s web portal.
Kansas’ online registration system failed in late May, just before the deadline to change party affiliation. That outage lasted about 24 hours.
Tennessee and Idaho’s voter-lookup sites crashed this year, telling people trying to confirm their registrations that no record was found. Virginia’s registration site failed in 2020; Florida’s failed in 2016.
Andy Moore is the executive director of Let’s Fix This, a nonprofit organization that strives to improve voter turnout.
“I don’t think anybody believes that it is acceptable that Oklahoma is last for voter turnout,” Moore said. “I would encourage the Legislature to extend the voter registration deadline. There’s no reason that Oklahoma couldn’t adopt that.”
Oklahoma Watch, at oklahomawatch.org, is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that covers public-policy issues facing the state.
