Overall, a smooth operation

Oklahoma Election Board Secretary Paul Ziriax was glad to have new voting machines in place for Tuesday’s elections. “The old system, I don’t think it would have survived this level of turnout and all the data,” Ziriax said on the morning after the elections.

The state used funding from a federal grant to switch to the new machines last year after retiring the previous optical scan machines, which had been in place 20 years.

There were some hiccups during a special state House election in April, but the state agency addressed those and Tuesday’s election went “overall pretty well,” Ziriax said. Snags in Cleveland and Tulsa counties kept about a dozen precincts from promptly producing final results.

Lines were long in some densly populated precincts, but Ziriax reported no significant problems related to voters having to show their ID before receiving a ballot. There were a few complaints of electioneering, he said, and this: “We did have a complaint from one voter that a precinct official coughed on her.” Go figure.

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