Oklahoma Votes Tuesday: A New Governor, an Open Senate Seat, and Two State Questions
Polls run 7 to 7, bring your photo ID or your voter ID card, and read the state questions before you're in the booth — SQ 845 and SQ 847 are worded like riddles on purpose-adjacent. Here's the Oklahoma voter's manual.
Oklahoma's polls open at 7 a.m. and close at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 3 — if you're in line at 7, you vote. Vote at your assigned polling place; Oklahoma does not have Election Day registration, so Tuesday belongs to voters already on the rolls. Find your precinct and your sample ballot in the OK Voter Portal at oklahoma.gov/elections before you leave the house.
At the check-in table, Oklahoma asks for proof of identity: a photo ID issued by Oklahoma, the federal government, or a tribal government — a driver's license is the usual — or the free voter identification card your county election board issued when you registered. No ID in hand? You may sign an identity affidavit and cast a provisional ballot, which counts when the election board verifies your affidavit. Holding an absentee ballot instead? It must be in your county election board's hands by 7 p.m. Tuesday — at this point, hand-deliver it; the mail has done all it can do.
The ballot is a generational one. With the governor's office open for the first time in eight years, Republican Mike Mazzei faces Democrat Cyndi Munson and three independent candidates. The U.S. Senate seat is open too — U.S. Rep. Kevin Hern, the Republican, faces Democrat Jasmine Thomas, Libertarian Sevier White, and two independents. Oklahomans also pick an attorney general, a state superintendent, and other statewide officers, decide nine appellate judges' retention, and answer two state questions: SQ 845, which would rewrite the rules of the Judicial Nominating Commission, and SQ 847, on property-tax assessment caps and the senior valuation freeze.
Oklahoma County voters get one more big one: a proposed sales tax to help finance a new county jail — the local question underneath a decade of argument about the current jail's condition. Read all of it tonight. The booth is a bad library.