MUSKOGEE — Convicted felons in Oklahoma have been allowed to vote for the last five or six years because of record keeping problems, the Muskogee Daily Phoenix reported Saturday.

Problems with Oklahoma Corrections Department records have kept local election boards from canceling the registrations of convicted felons. It’s against the law for felons to vote. Lance Ward, secretary of the State Election Board, said the board stopped sending felon lists supplied by the state Corrections Department to local election boards five or six years ago.

The state board had received complaints from people who were not felons and had been taken off voter rolls because their names appeared on the Corrections Department’s lists, Ward said. The lists sometimes had the names of people
convicted of misdemeanors and those who had been charged with felonies but
were not convicted, he said.

"We’ve been trying to get accurate lists, and it just seems there’s no way to do
it," Ward said. "I’m not sure what the problem is. The law is specific and clear, but the wording ‘final conviction’ is the problem." Rather than incorrectly take someone off an eligible voter list, the board decided to risk the chance a felon might vote.

Ward said he believes a small percentage of felons register to vote and an even
smaller percentage of felons actually vote. "It’s extremely rare that we receive any allegations of a felon voting," he said. But one Muskogee County resident said state officials should be doing more to enforce the law.

"The law requires them to do this," said John Loyd, who is active in the county
Republican Party. "They don’t have any discretion whether to do it or not. It’s
incumbent on them to do it and be accurate." Loyd began studying the problem during last year’s presidential election.

The state board is supposed to circulate the state Corrections Department list of
felons to all county boards each month. And local boards are supposed to obtain
copies of each conviction from the district court clerk, according to state law.

Joyce Gist, a clerk in Muskogee County Court Clerks Office, said that when she started in 1987, the office prepared a list of convictions for the local election board. But four years later, the office was told not to send the list to the election
board, Gist said.

Jay Parmley, chair for the Democratic Party of Oklahoma, said he wants state
officials to fix the problem. "If they don’t have a right to vote, then everything should be done to keep them from voting," he said. "If someone has served their time and have the right to vote again, they should be allowed to. But clearly, we would want to follow the law."

Lynn Powell President OK CURE