Tens Of Thousands Poured Into MAPS 4 Ads Before Election

There's no doubt that a lot of time and effort has been put into Tuesday's MAPS 4 vote, but there’s also been quite a bit of money poured in, especially for a local election. 

According to documents from the Federal Communications Commission and internal documents, more than $186,000 have been spent on ads running on three of the major networks in Oklahoma City. Only one station did not report its ad numbers to the FCC for this year.

That breaks down to about 50-cents per voter per ad in Oklahoma City just on TV ad buys alone. In the past that's been money well spent for supporters of the city expansion projects.

In normal citywide elections, records show average turnout is somewhere between 8 and 15 percent.

But MAPS votes have had much higher turnout. MAPS 3, which asked voters to approve $777 million in citywide projects, had a turnout above 30 percent which at the time Mayor Mick Cornett credited saturating advertising with raising turnout.

This time around, voters are being asked to approve $200 million more than they did in 2009, making it a waiting game to see if all those ad dollars have paid off when polls close.