Thousands of Tulsa voters cast their ballots during early voting, but a small handful were turned away at the polls because they were no longer registered to vote.
Kiersten Lane wanted to teach her two young children how important it is to vote.
"We waited until they got out of school on Friday and we went and stood in line for about an hour," Lane said.
But that hour-long wait turned out to be a waste of time.
"It took them about 10 minutes to find me in the system, and they said that I had been deleted and taken out of the system due to inactivity."
According to Oklahoma law, there are five reasons a person's voter registration can be canceled:
-The death of the voter.
-The voter is convicted of a felony.
-The voter is legally determined to be incapacitated.
-The voter moved out of the area and registers elsewhere.
-The voter has not responded to correspondence from the county and has not voted for more than four year.
But none of those reasons apply to Lane and her husband.
In 2004, Lane and her husband voted absentee from Fort Hood, Texas, where her husband was on active duty in the U.S. Army. In 2008, they were stationed at Fort Sam Houston outside San Antonio, Texas, and again voted absentee.
"I am worried," Lane said. "They aren't accounted for. There isn't a record whatsoever of our votes for the last eight years."
"It makes me wonder. Makes me question everything."
Patty Bryant, the Tulsa County Election Board Secretary, said while it is uncommon, some people do have to be cut from the registration rolls.
"It's very small," Bryant said. "It's not a big number at all."
Bryant couldn't discuss specifics of Lane's voting record with FOX23 News, but she couldn't offer a good explanation as to why Lane and her husband would have been purged from the voter registration rolls. Since both had received absentee ballots, and since they never received letters saying their votes were invalid for any reason, Bryant said it appeared Lane and her husband simply slipped through the cracks.
"it's a letdown," Lane said. "It's disappointing. And our system in general: it's disappointing."
Voters whose registration is listed on the rolls as inactive are supposed to be given a provisional ballot, which may or may not be counted before the vote is certified.
But since Lane and her husband had been completely deleted from the registration rolls, their only option was to re-register for the next election.
Click here to check your voter registration status and find other important voter information in Tulsa County.
