Are These Legitimate Tossed-Away Votes For President Trump Found At An Oklahoma Wedding?

Question

A recent News story reports a wedding party finding torn-apart ballots, the majority of which are marked for President Trump.

While the majority of the sites that I've found this story on are pro-Trump sites, I'm not seeing anything suspicious in the articles themselves, or the video that the majority of these articles have included.

Are these legitimate ballots, the majority of which have been cast for Trump, that have been thrown out? It is already noted in the video that such ballots wouldn't change Oklahoma's results - since Oklahoma is deep red - so this question is only asking about the validity of the torn-up ballots.

Answer 1

According to the Oklahoma State Election Board (via Twitter):

This video is from pct 469 / subpct 457 in Tulsa County. These are clearly "spoiled ballots" where the voter mistakenly marked more than one option in a race. Spoiled ballots are returned to the precinct clerk and destroyed, then the voter is issued a new ballot.

They use screenshots from the video to highlight this point. Here are some of the examples they show - they annotated the video to circle the part of the ballot that shows it is "spoiled":

They also referenced the relevant statute:

"Should a voter spoil any ballot in an effort to vote the same, the voter shall... return it to the clerk. The clerk shall destroy the ballot in the presence of the voter and shall issue the voter another ballot..."

And they show a redacted photo of the spoiled ballot affadavit for that polling location, with signatures of 11 voters who had spoiled ballots:

Answer 2

There is no credible evidence to support this.

The only evidence here is a few guys talking on a video. We can't verify anything they say, not even that they were actually at a wedding in Oklahoma, never mind anything they claim about ballots.

The most obvious deficiency is that anyone who seriously believes they have found evidence of voter fraud should be reporting it to the relevant authorities so it can be investigated, and a thorough examination made of the ballots and other evidence. They have not done that. (If they had it would be national news, like the report of ballots in a dumpster in Georgia.) Their behaviour has been entirely consistent with that of someone wanting to get a bit of attention by making sensational allegations.

Other flaws in the story:

• The reports disagree about when the wedding took place. The first link says voting had "taken place earlier in the day". The second says "earlier in the week". It is hugely unlikely that a wedding is booked into a polling station venue on election day, given polls don't close until 7pm.
• Assuming the most likely timing is correct, several days elapsed between voting and the alleged wedding, during which time we are asked to believe that nobody emptied the trash cans - especially the alleged people who allegedly dumped the alleged ballots and would allegedly be keen to remove the evidence of their crime.
• Physical ballot boxes are not generally openable at the polling station. Instead they are not opened until they are taken to the counting office. Someone would have had to break open the boxes to get at the completed ballot papers, which would have been noticed (and been a major incident) at the counting office.
• Other cases have shown that many papers look somewhat like ballots used for voting, including sample ballots, unused ballots, and papers printed on a home computer made to look like ballots