Locked door delays voting in East Tulsa precinct

Voting in this Tuesday’s Presidential primary election was delayed in one East Tulsa precinct because poll workers were locked out of the designated polling station. Voting was supposed to commence at 7:00 am on March 5th, but this was not the case at Memorial Drive Methodist Church at 15th and Memorial, which is the polling location for precinct 76 and one other precinct. When voters arrived just prior to 7:00, they found poll workers sitting on the steps outside with boxes of o.cial materials, waiting to be let into the building.

A church employee who eventually let the poll workers in explained that the key card they had been given was incorrectly set to a timer that was an hour off, which is why they couldn’t access the site until help arrived.

Once the doors were unlocked, the poll workers quickly began setting up their tables, and at 7:20 the Krst voters were given their ballots. With only one race to vote, the ballots were quickly completed, however the voters were still not able to complete the process. This was because the voting machines had to be inspected and powered up, something that normally would have been done an hour earlier had the workers been allowed into the building on time.

Poll workers offered voters the option of putting their ballots in a cardboard box with the promise they would be fed into the machines later, but, unsurprisingly, no one accepted this offer, preferring to wait and personally insure the privacy of their vote and to see for themselves the ballots were counted.

The Krst vote was Knally counted at 7:35 am, about 30 minutes later than it should have been. The inconvenienced voters took the problem in stride, and no one appeared to leave due to the delay.

The church employee who had unlocked the doors said that steps would be taken to make sure this sort of problem does not recur in the future. (La Semana)