The coronavirus pandemic is posing challenges to election officials across the country.
During Tulsa's weekly coronavirus update on Monday, the county’s election board secretary, Gwen Freeman, talked about the increased demand for absentee ballots and voting options.
"We have mailed out as of today about 47,000. We are expecting to mail out all told between 100,000 and 130,000 absentee ballots. That is a five-fold increase, and potentially a little more, over anything we’ve ever done historically," Freeman said.
Freeman encouraged Tulsa voters to avoid a backlog and mail their ballots in as soon as possible.
Freeman also announced the opportunity for Tulsans to use their traditional three-day early voting period. This year, early voting will take place at OneOK Field, otherwise known as the Drillers' stadium.
"One of the reasons we opted for this location is it’s an open-air facility, as you know, and it holds a lot of folks," Freeman said.
Early voting will be available October 29th, 30th and 31st.
In addition to coronavirus adjustments, Freeman said Tulsa is seeing more demand for voting in general. The county has seen 13,000 new voter registrations already this year, a three-to-four-fold increase over past elections.
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