OKLAHOMA_Will you get to
vote in November? If you've voted before you might take the process for
granted, and assume that everything has stayed the same.
But on Election
Day, some Oklahomans may end up in the wrong place and lose out on the
opportunity to cast their ballot.
Nobody is
pointing fingers, or getting angry, everybody from the local county election
boards to party chairmen, all the way to the state election board wants to get
it right, so you get to vote. One thing we learned, even if you haven't moved
or changed your name, there could be problems you don't know about, you can,
and should make sure you get to vote.
Koleta Wells is
a democrat but she doesn't care how you vote, she just wants to see as many
people as possible go to the polls. She was helping some rural Oklahomans
register to vote when she discovered a problem.
"The residents there have had there name
and address left the same but the town and the zip code changed from the
residence itself to a neighboring community."
That's not
good, if they didn't find out before Election Day, they would have gone to the
wrong polling place, and there were other problems too.
"Then we
discovered that another gentlemen that lived on past about another 7 or 8 miles
had his polling location changed from the town in which he had been voting for
many years, to another town another 15 or 20 miles away"
So we decided
to check it out, after our conversation with Koleta we went to Oklahoma City to talk with Paul Ziriax from
the state election board. He said precincts and polling places have changed for
thousands of Oklahomans.
"Because
of redistricting that occurred in 2011 when the legislature and the various
county commissions in the 77 counties redrew district lines to make sure that
they balanced population wise with the new census data."
If your
precinct has changed you should have received information in the mail. Even if
you've voted in the same location for years you'd be wise to double check your
polling location, Ziriax suggests you do that by calling your county election
board.
The last day to
register to vote is next Friday the 12th, you can go to your county election
board, the local tag agency or you can download a form from the state election
board website at www.ok.gov/elections, look for the tab along the top of the
page that says voter registration, if you do that, make sure that your
registration has a postmark no later than October 12th.
