Cleveland County voters waited hours for election results Tuesday night after a technical failure blocked the county from transmitting data to the state's reporting website.
Results from the Nov. 3 general election began appearing on the Oklahoma State Election Board site shortly before 9 p.m., according to the Norman Transcript. All Cleveland County precincts were fully reported before 11 p.m.
County and state officials described the reporting problem at different levels of detail.
A Cleveland County Election Board spokesperson told The Oklahoman the stall was due to a hardware issue at the State Election Board that prevented results from being reported online. The Oklahoma State Election Board, in a statement from Secretary Paul Ziriax, described the problem differently. The board said the issues were "strictly related to the reporting of the results from the county election boards to the State Election Board."
Officials resolved the Cleveland County problem by switching to a backup system to upload results, according to News On 6.
Comanche County experienced a separate transmission failure the same night. That county's staff had to manually enter results into the state system and did not finish until about 1:30 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 4, KOCO reported.
The state board emphasized that neither county's delay affected the accuracy of vote counts.
The glitch came on a night when more than one million Oklahomans voted statewide, according to the state election board. Cleveland County itself saw record early-voting turnout. A total of 24,475 voters cast early ballots, compared with 14,212 four years ago, according to Cleveland County Board of County Commissioners meeting records.
County election results are scheduled to be certified Friday, Nov. 6, after 5 p.m. State and federal results will be certified Tuesday, Nov. 10.
Residents who have questions about their ballot can contact the Cleveland County Election Board at its Norman office.
