THE OKLAHOMAN, 9/25/24
Who are Oklahoma’s deleted voters? State provides data breaking it down by party.
Hundreds of thousands of Oklahomans whose voter registration was deleted in recent years roughly reflect the overall layout of party affiliation in the state, though Democrats and independents were overrepresented among voters deleted for inactivity ...
... It’s no surprise that Democrats and independents show greater inactivity than Republicans in Oklahoma, said Pat McFerron, a conservative campaign consultant and polling expert.
The vast majority of consequential partisan elections in Oklahoma are decided in Republican primaries, well before Democrats and independents get the chance to weigh in, McFerron said.
Very few General Election races in the state are competitive enough to be decided by 10% or less of the vote.
When pollsters like McFerron call inactive voters, many say they’re unlikely to vote because they’re not interested in government and politics, he said, and the other common response is “they just don’t think their vote matters.”
Only the Democratic Party in Oklahoma has opened its primary elections to independent voters. The state’s Republican and Libertarian parties have not.
Implementing open or unified primaries could help engage more people, McFerron said. These concepts would allow registered voters to participate in primary elections regardless of their party affiliation, and it could make every candidate accountable to every voter.
A campaign to bring open or unified elections to Oklahoma is underway. McFerron said he is working with the initiative.
“Oklahoma is now 50th in the nation in voter turnout for November elections, and if we don’t do something to change it, we’re going to continue to have less and less civic engagement,” McFerron said.
TULSA WORLD, 10/30/24
Oklahoma’s voting system ‘just doesn’t work,' pollsters says
Oklahomans don't vote.
It's a fact that academics, civic leaders and political insiders have observed, bemoaned and exploited for decades.
As Jeremy Gruber of the nonprofit Open Primaries observed during this week's Oklahoma Academy for State Goals annual town hall, fewer and fewer Oklahomans — and Americans in general — are electing larger and larger shares of state and federal representative bodies.
"In the last (2022) general election, ... 7% of Americans elected 90% of the U.S. House of Representatives," Gruber said. "All across America ... states are suffering from legislatures that are being elected by smaller and smaller groups of voters."
Gruber was one of more than 20 speakers and panelists for this year's town hall in Tulsa. At the core of the discussions was how to make Oklahoma's political system more responsive to the people of the state — and how to engage the people of the state more in the system.
For years and probably decades, Oklahoma's voter participation has ranked among the lowest in the United States — and the U.S. ranks toward the bottom of representative democracies.
There seem to be two fundamental reasons, interlocking in some ways, for that.
Some Oklahomans don't vote by choice.
Some don't because they have no choice.
Only 32 of Oklahoma's 101 state representatives will be chosen in Tuesday's general election. The other 69 were decided on filing day or in closed or semi-closed primaries, meaning some to all of the 40,000 people living in each of those districts had no say in choosing a representative.
Among the 32 House seats on Tuesday ballots scattered around the state, most are considered uncompetitive and thus offer little incentive for participation.
The same is more or less true of the state Senate.
"I don't think our current system is sustainable," said longtime Oklahoma City pollster and strategist Pat McFerron. "It's not working. Our November election (participation) is 50th in the nation, and it's easy to see why. Our November elections don't matter.
"The reality is, a state senator represents 80,000 residents. If you can get 2,500 votes in your primary, you're probably going to win. That's 3%. … Our current system just doesn't work."
McFerron was part of a six-member Monday afternoon panel discussion that dealt primarily with changing Oklahoma's primary system to something closer to the way Tulsa and Oklahoma City elect mayors and city councilors.
The most likely scenario is an initiative petition to eliminate traditional party primaries in favor of a single ballot listing all candidates. Unlike Tulsa's and Oklahoma City's nonpartisan elections, the consensus seems to be that for state elections candidates' party affiliations would be listed.
If no candidate received a majority in the first round of elections — which is sometimes called a primary and sometimes a general election — a second round would be held between the top two finishers, regardless of party.
Oklahoma's current system involves primaries closed to all but members of the state's three recognized parties: Republican, Democrat and Libertarian, except that Democrats allow independents to vote in their primaries.
This contributes to the situation described by Gruber and McFerron and bars large shares of citizens from participating in taxpayer funded elections. It is also argued that it is a factor in the polarization of the major parties.
Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt said polarization is largely a myth fed by the electoral system.
"Sure, that 15% on the left (extreme), the 15% on the right, they're polarized, but there's 70% of us in the middle who just want to work together to get things done," he said.
Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum, speaking Sunday night, made much the same argument and noted that while he and his friend Holt have won elections by wide margins as moderate Republicans in the state's two largest cities, their political careers are generally considered over.
Not mentioned was the fate of former Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett, a popular moderate Republican who could not get through the 2018 GOP gubernatorial primary.
Monday's panel discussion consisted mostly of Holt ardently arguing for the switch and former state Sen. Mike Mazzei and Oklahoma City attorney Andy Lester adamantly opposing it, with McFerron offering data in support of change and Oklahoma Libertarian Party Chairman Chris Powell somewhere in the middle.
Lester, a Republican, said he didn't want anyone except Republicans choosing Republican candidates, while Mazzei argued that moderate leadership is not necessarily the best leadership.
"The reason there aren't a lot of competitive primaries is the people of Oklahoma have shifted their political thinking to the ideas that are generally espoused by conservative Republicans," said Mazzei. "The Reason Foundation is a public policy think tank, and they report that, according to the Center for Government Studies, that more than one-third of political campaigns now from open primary scenarios are seeing two candidates from the same party squaring off."
Tulsa Republicans are upset because that happened in this year's Tulsa mayoral election. Although the election is nonpartisan, both of the two finalists, Karen Keith and Monroe Nichols, currently hold other offices as Democrats.
That argument, in turn, led to questions about whether elections should serve the best interests of the parties or the will of the people.
Under the current system, a party with 52% of registered voters has more than 80% of the representation in the Oklahoma Legislature and 100% of the state's congressional delegation.
The Oklahoma Academy town hall continued through Wednesday, when a list of recommendations was drawn up for submission to legislators.
Started by Henry Bellmon in 1967 following his first term as governor, the Oklahoma Academy for State Goals is a centrist, nonpartisan organization whose stated purpose is identifying practical solutions that advance the state and its people.
Randy Krehbiel, Tulsa World
Read the Tulsa World story here.
THE OKLAHOMAN, 11/4/24
Could independents swing Oklahoma election results? More voters say they're independent.
Oklahomans and voters across the United States have increasingly opted to identify as independent.
But one day ahead of a presidential election that could be determined by a razor-thin margin, experts say being independent doesn't equate to being undecided.
Research shows many independents are often loyal to one of the two major political parties. Identifying as independent can be a sign that a voter doesn't agree with all of a party's platforms.
As Oklahomans geared up for this year's election, the state gained more than 130,000 new registered voters from January through October, according to the Oklahoma State Election
Board. The number of registered independents grew by 43,700, a 10% increase that outpaced both Republicans and Democrats. The Republican base added 83,000 voters, up 6.9%, while the number of Democratic voters rose by 6,600, up 1%.
For Oklahoma County, the most populous county in the state, about 42% of its 24,500 newly registered voters identified as independent, 36% as Republican and 21% as Democrat.
Overall, independents make up about 20% of all registered voters in the state. In comparison, independents made up about 15% of the electorate in 2016 and 16% in 2020.
Independent voters in Oklahoma don't want to be tied to one side or another, said Margaret Kobos, the founder of Oklahoma United for Progress, an organization seeking to reform the state’s primary election system.
"They want to float in the middle, and they want to have all the choices in front of them, and they don't understand why they cannot have that," Kobos said. "They're unwilling to participate in a system that is a black-and-white, zero-sum game.”
Why are so many Oklahomans registering as independent?
Independents continue to make up the largest political bloc in the United States, according to Gallop, with 43% of adults identifying as such in 2023.
Independents often don't feel represented by the Republican or Democratic parties as those parties have adopted more extreme platforms, said Andy Moore, the founder and chief executive of Let's Fix This, a nonpartisan nonprofit in Oklahoma City that promotes civic engagement. Still, most independents will ultimately choose a partisan candidate on the ballot, Moore added.
“Voters feel very frustrated by the limited choices they have at the ballot, and so they've got to pick one of the candidates," Moore said. "If they don't like them, they've got to pick one. Often, they will pick the candidate they think is maybe closest to them to their values.”
Many independents are actually stealth partisans, meaning that although they identify as independent, they are usually loyal to one party, said Tyler Johnson, a political science professor at the University of Oklahoma.
“They say they're independent, but on Election Day, they vote entirely Democrat or entirely Republican," Johnson said. "They lean in one direction. They're just not willing to say they're a Democrat or Republican.”
A 2019 study from the Pew Research Center found that 81% of independents lean toward either the Republican Party or the Democratic Party.
Independents who lean toward a party generally agree with those who affiliate with the same party, according to the Pew Research Center. For example, while Republican-leaning independents might be less supportive of Donald Trump than people who identify as Republicans, according to the study, 70% of them still approved of his job performance during his first two years in office.
Overall, independents are less politically engaged than registered Republicans or Democrats, according to the study, and that is even more true among independents who are truly nonpartisan.
Should independents be able to vote in party primaries?
Kobos attributes the lack of political engagement to the inability of independents to vote in party primaries in Oklahoma. The Sooner State has a closed primary system.
Democrats have opened their primaries to independents, while Republicans and Libertarians have not. Primary elections not only drive the choices that voters see in November, but also voter participation, Kobos said.
“We have a lot of moderate, majority type candidates who want to reach these independent voters, but we don't really have a mechanism to allow them to do that," Kobos said.
Open primaries could also draw in more moderate candidates that stray from partisan messages, Johnson said, which he said is partly why open primaries are not popular in states such as Oklahoma where the GOP has control.
“Closed primaries lead to polarizing options on Election Day, and Republicans in this state want nominees who are conservative, who clearly fit the brand, and that's the case in a lot of places where Republicans have power and have closed primaries," Johnson said. "They want someone who they feel they can trust to move the ball forward on any number of issues they care about, and they want those people who they nominate to fight for conservative priorities and conservative perspectives.”
Kobos said she believes open primaries would be an immediate way to increase civic engagement in a state with one of the lowest voter turnout rates in the nation.
“We’re all exhausted with the status quo," Kobos said. "It’s really important for everyone to understand that we created this system, and we can fix this.”
Tulsa World, 3/20/25
Dr. Kenneth Setter: Oklahoma lawmakers are attacking direct democracy; time to fight back
Oklahoma’s constitution guarantees citizens the right to petition their government, giving the people a direct voice in shaping policy when elected leaders fail to act. But over the past several years, the Legislature has systematically chipped away at this right, making it harder and harder for citizen-led initiatives to reach the ballot.
Now, with Senate Bill 1027, lawmakers are launching one of the most aggressive attacks yet on the petition process — limiting voter participation, adding bureaucratic red tape and making it nearly impossible for grassroots movements to succeed.
SB 1027 — sponsored by Sen. David Bullard, R-Durant, and House Speaker Kyle Hilbert, R-Bristow — would restrict how many signatures can be collected from different parts of the state, capping the number from larger counties at an arbitrarily low percentage. It passed out of the Senate on Tuesday by a 36-8 vote.
Under SB 1027, no more than 10% of petition signatures could come from a county with a population over 400,000, which applies only to Oklahoma and Tulsa counties. No more than 4% could come from a single smaller county.
Right now, petitioners must collect 173,000 signatures to put a constitutional amendment to a ballot for a statewide vote.
SB 1027 would allow only 35,000 signatures (20% of the required signature total) from Oklahoma and Tulsa counties combined, despite these counties having 36% of Oklahoma’s registered voters. The remaining 138,000 signatures would have to come from the rest of the state.
Oklahoma, Tulsa, Cleveland and Canadian counties together account for 48% of all registered voters in the state. Under SB 1027, petition circulators in these four counties would be capped at 48,400 signatures, or 28% of the required total.
This clearly and intentionally limits the ability of voters in larger counties to petition their government. This is not democracy — it is voter suppression.
Proponents of SB 1027 claim that petition efforts target only a small number of counties and should be forced to collect signatures more evenly across the state. This is false.
The most recent successful petition campaign collected signatures from all 77 counties. There is no valid reason to impose arbitrary caps on where signatures can be gathered. These limits do nothing but suppress citizen participation and will almost certainly lead to costly lawsuits, forcing taxpayers to foot the bill for an unconstitutional law.
SB 1027 wouldn’t stop at limiting signature collection — it would add several other unnecessary hurdles designed to make petitioning harder, including transferring power over initiative petitions from the Oklahoma Supreme Court to the Secretary of State, a political appointee with no legal training who would have unchecked power to reject petitions based on subjective criteria.
SB 1027 would force petition signers to verify that they have read or had the entire ballot title read to them. This is an unnecessary obstacle and double standard. Voters are not required to attest to reading an entire state question before voting on it; nor, for that matter, are legislators required to attest to reading the bills they vote on.
SB 1027 would severely hamper how campaigns use paid signature gatherers to support their effort, adding increased costs, administrative burdens and reporting requirements.
Oklahoma has the shortest signature-gathering window in the country (90 days) and the highest number of required signatures per capita. So the use of paid signature gathers has been made unavoidable. SB 1027, once again, intentionally targets the way successful citizen-led efforts work in an attempt to cripple all future ballot initiatives.
Oklahomans want and deserve more, not less, input into the policies that impact our state and our families. If this law passes and is allowed to stand, it will severely and permanently weaken Oklahomans’ constitutional right to petition their government.
Make your voice heard by contacting your legislators and asking them to vote no. This is not a partisan issue; this is about protecting every Oklahoman’s right to participate in democracy. Don’t let politicians take that away.
Kenneth Setter, M.D., is a retired pediatrician from Tulsa and one of three petitioners on State Question 836.
