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Oklahoma Election Board Secretary Shoots Down Republican's Request For Audit Of 2020 Results

Chris Polansky
/
KWGS News
Voters stand on line outside Tulsa's University United Methodist Church on Tuesday, Nov. 3rd, 2020.

Saying Oklahoma's election system is "among the most accurate and secure anywhere in the entire world," the state's top election official on Tuesday rejected a call by a Republican state representative to audit the results of the 2020 general election.

"There is no controversy surrounding the 2020 General Election in Oklahoma," Oklahoma State Election Board Secretary Paul Ziriax wrote in response to a letter from Rep. Sean Roberts (R-Hominy) which requested an investigation into last year's election despite no evidence of any wrongdoing or inaccuracies. "Because of the strong protections our state has in place for the security and integrity of elections, there is no credible suspicion or evidence of pervasive fraud here. In fact, our state successfully defended a lawsuit against our election integrity laws in 2020. Furthermore, evidence suggests that voter suppression is virtually non-existent in our state."

Ziriax said such an audit would be unnecessarily time-consuming and expensive, as well as potentially unlawful.

Echoing tenets of defeated incumbent President Donald Trump's "Big Lie," Roberts said in a press release that Oklahomans may not be able to trust the results of the election in the state due to "fraud" in other states. (No evidence of systemic fraud has ever been presented in last year's election, which President Joe Biden won legitimately over Trump.)

Trump carried all 77 counties in Oklahoma in both 2016 and 2020, but lost the nationwide popular vote both years and the Electoral College vote in 2020. His repeated lies about the election being "stolen" from him led his supporters to carry out the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol during a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6th.

Chris joined Public Radio Tulsa as a news anchor and reporter in April 2020. He’s a graduate of Hunter College and the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism, both at the City University of New York.
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