TULSA WORLD, 4/17/25
What did the Oklahoma City bombing teach you? From those who were there
Read the article at TulsaWorld.com
After hearing from the reporters who covered the bombing, we wanted to catch up with those closest to the tragedy — the people who became known during and after the bombing for the roles they played. We asked each one: What did the bombing teach you? — Jason Collington, editor
The pain, the trauma, the contradictions and the paradoxes of April 19, 1995, never go away, says former Gov. Frank Keating.
So many senseless deaths. So much grief and horror.
So much honor and courage and, ultimately, growth.
“You never can come to terms with an event like April 19, 1995,” Keating said in a recent interview.
The bombing, he said, was “utterly without sense, and it was 100% evil. I just can’t believe that someone would do what (Timothy) McVeigh did. … In Oklahoma City, every one of the victims were right in front of you, whether it was the 19 children or the total of 168 of our neighbors and friends.
“That was hugely unsettling and caused a lot of people mental stress, and a lot of them, myself included, have not gotten over it,” said Keating, who had been in office 3½ months on the day of the bombing.
Keating recalled seeing, in the immediate aftermath of the blast, “a black shoe, polished black shoes, sticking out of the rubble with blue pants and a red stripe. I said to the folks with me, ‘Well, get the Marine Corps Honor Guard.’”
Years later, long after he’d left office, Keating visited the Oklahoma City National Memorial’s museum. He said he’d been only a few times previously because of the difficult emotions it evoked, but he went on this occasion because of out-of-state guests.
While there, Keating’s eyes fell on the photograph of Marine Capt. Randolph Guzman, one of the 168 dead.
“I said, ‘That’s the leg,’ and I just broke out sobbing. That was years after the Oklahoma City bombing, but that is not an unusual reaction from a lot of people, because it was just so horribly painful.”
But Keating has seen another side. Children of bombing victims have told him they might not have gone to college if not for the financial assistance they received. Many, he said, went into medical fields and other careers that serve the community.
He believes the city began to see itself in a different light because of its performance in the wake of the tragedy.
The rest of the country did, too. Keating thinks the dignity, compassion and generosity of Oklahoma City residents might even have helped persuade NBA owners to let the Seattle Supersonics become the Oklahoma City Thunder.
“Out of evil, good can come. And I think certainly Oklahoma City is a stronger, better place as a result of something that none of us would ever want to occur.”
It’s a paradox with which he clearly struggles.
“The postscript is that the devil does walk the streets,” he said. “The evil that McVeigh brought to us was unspeakable. It was inexcusable.
“But a lot of people with real difficulty got back off their knees and made successes of their lives,” he said. “The problem is those 19 babies (killed) never had an opportunity to go to college or have a child. A number of the people who were killed were the sole breadwinners of their families or wonderful mothers and dads that will never be heard from again.
“We never can get over that.”
While it would be hard to find anyone anywhere who hasn’t seen his most famous photo, Charles Porter has a good reason for keeping it out of sight at his home.
He has children now. And the image he captured — of a firefighter cradling a dead little girl — tells a story he’d prefer to shield them from, at least until they’re older.
“I’ve still got the negatives of everything I shot that day. And someday I may put up that one and some of the others,” said Porter, who displays examples of his photography around his house — but none from the scene of the Oklahoma City bombing.
For Porter, a physical therapist who now lives in Fort Worth, learning that such evil was possible wasn’t any easier at 25 — the age he was on April 19, 1995, when he became one of the first on the scene at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.
Porter worked at a bank just a couple of blocks away and ran over following the explosion at 9:02 a.m.
He took along his camera and began documenting everything he saw.
“I was just going on instinct and adrenaline. I would see something and shoot it,” said Porter, an amateur photographer who had done some work for OU athletics.
Using a zoom lens, Porter was able to keep a respectful distance, shooting only from across the street.
And it was because of that distance that he didn’t initially grasp the significance of one of his shots: a photo of Oklahoma City firefighter Chris Fields as he carried away the lifeless body of 1-year-old Baylee Almon.
Baylee was one of 19 children who died in the blast.
Picked up by The Associated Press, the image would go on to shock and sadden audiences worldwide, later winning Porter a Pulitzer Prize for spot news photography.
Reflecting on the experience 30 years later, Porter finds it strange that he doesn’t remember sounds or smells from the scene at all.
Only what he saw stuck. And when he thinks back, the images play “like a slideshow” in his head.
Maybe it was more of a reminder than an actual lesson, but either way, the image of Baylee Almon is still unsparing in how it delivers it: the universal truth that evil does not spare innocence.
Having been an eyewitness to such horror makes Porter more protective now that he’s a parent.
A time will eventually come for him to talk to his children — Abigail, 13, and Chase, 11 — about the story.
“But they don’t need to experience that yet,” Porter said.
“They don’t need to understand what the words ‘mass murder’ mean or know some of the stuff that Dad has seen.”
Working for so long in close proximity to death, you became immune to the smell.
But the sight of it — there was no getting used to that.
“Unfortunately, there were pieces of human remains in the debris,” Dennis Larsen said.
Only adding to the horror of it, he said, was that some of them obviously were children.
Thirty years since the Oklahoma City bombing, the anger can still be heard in Larsen’s voice as he recalls what he witnessed as leader of the Tulsa Police Department’s Bomb Squad, which combed through the rubble to recover pieces of the explosive device.
“Timothy McVeigh went through the building in the days prior to the bombing, and he was well-aware that there was a day care on the first floor,” said Larsen, now chief of TPD.
“He knew they were there, and he pulled a basically 5,000-pound truck filled with explosives literally less than 50 feet away from where the day care was.
“That’s why I termed him, as I’ve always thought in my heart he was, as representing pure evil.”
With Tulsa’s being the closest bomb squad to Oklahoma City, then-Sgt. Larsen was called on personally by U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno to take his team to the scene on the morning of April 19, 1995.
The squad would spend the next 101 days there, working in rotations.
Recovering the pieces of the explosive device was a painstaking task. But thanks to their efforts and those of other experts, the FBI was able to reassemble the entire truck, which would be key to the investigation.
Larsen had no idea until later how much the smell of death had soaked into him during the process.
“After I got home, we tried everything we could to get the smell out of my jacket, but nothing worked,” he said. “We eventually burned it at our cabin.”
The bombing “brought the reality home that we could no longer say, ‘That would never happen here,’” Larsen added.
“It was probably in my 47 years the single most evil thing I’ve ever seen one person do to other people. And it taught me the lesson that you can never say you’ve seen it all.”
There were a lot of ways Charlie Hanger’s encounter with Tim McVeigh could have ended 30 years ago.
Fortunately for everybody except McVeigh, it ended with him in jail and Hanger a hero.
Then an Oklahoma Highway Patrol trooper, Hanger had just helped a stranded motorist on northbound Interstate 35 near Perry in Noble County when he noticed a yellow 1977 Mercury Marquis with no license plate.
Hanger switched on his lights and pulled the car over.
“It was just a routine traffic stop,” Hanger said recently.
Two days would pass before Hanger or anyone else realized that that routine traffic stop had netted the Oklahoma City bomber, Timothy McVeigh.
Earlier that morning on April 19, 1995, Hanger had responded to a call for all available troopers to to to Oklahoma City. He was barely on Interstate 35, however, when the order was rescinded and he turned around.
Had that not happened, Hanger likely would not have made that “routine traffic stop,” and McVeigh would have kept on driving.
In those days, Hanger said, troopers did not get out of cruisers and approach vehicles, as is the practice today. Instead, he stood behind his car door and called for McVeigh to come toward him.
Hanger said he quickly became suspicious.
“He wasn’t looking at me,” Hanger said. “He was looking toward the west, like he was thinking about something. I was beginning to be suspicious the car was stolen.”
McVeigh finally got out of his car and walked toward Hanger. They met near the back of the Mercury, where Hanger asked for McVeigh’s driver’s license.
“When he reached around for his wallet, I could see a bulge under his jacket,” Hanger recalled. “I asked if he had a gun, and he said he did.”
Hanger arrested McVeigh on a concealed weapons charge and booked him into the Noble County jail. He didn’t think much more about it until two days later, when the FBI came calling.
By then investigators had identified McVeigh as the bombing’s prime suspect — and discovered that he was in the Noble County jail.
So many things could have turned out differently.
Under today’s concealed carry laws, McVeigh might not have been arrested at all. Hanger and McVeigh could have missed each other altogether. McVeigh could have stopped long enough to put the stolen car tag he had on the Mercury. He might have been released from jail before authorities connected him to the Oklahoma City bombing.
McVeigh could have decided to shoot it out with Hanger and left one or both of them dead or wounded alongside the highway.
“I’ve often wondered if he was trying to draw me up close” for a shot, Hanger said.
“Really, I considered him a rat. He scurried away (from the bombing) like the rat he was, and he tried to scurry away from me.”
Hanger served almost another decade in the Highway Patrol and then was elected to four terms as Noble County sheriff before retiring in 2020.
“I’ve had an opportunity to speak to a lot of law officers and training classes,” Hanger said. “I tell them there is no such thing as a routine traffic stop.”
For days, he dug. Just like the volunteers all around him. For 24 hours a day over the course of weeks, after the explosion turned concrete and so much more into a million little pieces, Johnny Kirk and so many others kept digging and filling 5-gallon buckets at what remained of the Murrah Building.
He felt the same thing over and over.
“I don’t want to say helpless, but yeah, not a lot of hope,” he remembered thinking with each bucket during a recent interview.
One day, Kirk and others worked where the armory fell, leaving guns and paperwork to be recovered.
On another, they worked where the day care was. Where nothing was recovered.
What Kirk didn’t know was that the important work he did after the explosion would completely change his life years later. But he knows when it all started: the moment he saw the photo of Oklahoma City firefighter Chris Fields with 1-year-old Baylee Almon in his arms.
For Kirk, it started a constantly revolving slideshow of photos in his mind of the seven other babies he didn’t save as a firefighter.
“What eventually led to me falling apart was that picture,” he said. “I’d given CPR to six infants, and one that was a little older than her. None of them lived. So I’ve held children the same way that firefighter was holding her. And you couldn’t get away from that picture for the longest time.”
For Kirk, the bombing was the third mass casualty event he had worked as a Tulsa firefighter. One was a traffic accident, where the speeds were so fast the car was unrecognizable. Another was a fire that killed five people. Many may not realize how many times first responders rush to a shooting, stabbing or suicide. Checking for a pulse when they know there isn’t one.
“I dealt with it, you know, the best that I could,” Kirk remembered.
Until he couldn’t.
Drugs helped but were certainly not the right cure. For about 2½ years, he said he was circling the drain. He was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. He took a leave of absence from the Fire Department. His addictions, decisions and actions led him right to the police.
In October 1998, Kirk was sentenced to 13 months in Leavenworth federal prison. After he got out, he started all over again. He received his bachelor’s degree from Rogers State University. Two years later, his master’s degree in human relations at the University of Oklahoma. Six years later, his doctorate from Oklahoma State University in educational psychology. He became a professor of psychology and counseling at Northeastern State University.
Now, he teaches classes at NSU and works in a lab doing research to better understand the brain.
“I hit a bottom, and I got help. And, you know, one of my messages is, don’t wait too long,” he said.
“You know, I had lots of times along the way I could have sought help. I’m sure that there are people who will never forgive me for breaking my oath, but, you know, the vast majority of people that I’ve known in my fire service career have been very supportive, because, again, I’ve got 28 years of doing the right thing.
“The message I drive is don’t wait. Help people now. Don’t let them slide down the scale. You know, I waited too long.”
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.
MORE NEWS
9/22/24
9/22/24
9/22/24
"The phrase open primaries means way infinite number of things, right? And there are, in a sense, infinite variations on an electoral system.
What I always say when I observe Oklahoma City's effectiveness over the last, you know, quarter century and more. And people always look at Oklahoma City and Tulsa and they say, sure, whatever successes or failures you have, guys, it sure seems like you're electing mayors that unify people that seem competent, that are well-liked across the political spectrum." - Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt
Watch OKC Mayor David Holt on Flashpoint as he discusses unified primaries and how they can bring Oklahomans together.
9/6/24
9/22/24
9/22/24
"Chad we’re 50th in voter turnout in this country. Part of it is the fact that our voters are expected to go to the polls a lot and very frequently when they go. It doesn't matter. Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, you just talked about why we don't have general elections in November. It's already decided in the primary in so many of the districts. Um why in a runoff, the voter turnout is so poor. It's, they've just voted and now they're coming back to vote again in the same, basically the same election. So one of the goals is to increase voter participation by allowing the voters that fund elections to participate in the election." - AJ Griffin
Listen to this lively discussion and learn more about unified primaries in the process.
8/30/24
9/22/24
8/30/24
OKLAHOMA CITY — Oklahoma’s voting system is leading to low turnout rates, the election of more extreme candidates and disenfranchisement of voters who are excluded from participating in primary elections, experts said.
That’s prompting conversations about whether reforms are needed to increase voter participation rates and how the state can ensure hundreds of thousands of independent voters have a voice at the ballot box at a time when most outcomes are determined months ahead of November’s general election.
Read the Oklahoma Voice article here.
8/11/24
8/11/24
8/30/24
TULSA - Corey Jones, Lee Enterprises
Organizers of a grassroots efforts to open
Oklahoma’s primary elections to all voters say they’ve settled on which form the revised primaries should take and aim to have a ballot question ready for the gubernatorial general election in November 2026.
In a recent Tulsa World interview, Oklahoma United leaders said they’re drafting language for a citizen petition to amend the state constitution to have a “top-two, unified ballot with partisan labels.” It would eliminate partisan primaries and allow each registered voter to cast a ballot for any candidate in primary elections.
In other words, every candidate in a race would be on the same primary ballot. Next to each candidate’s name would be whether they are registered as a Republican, Democrat, independent or Libertarian.
Every registered voter — regardless of party affiliation or lack thereof — would be allowed to cast a ballot for the candidate of their choice. And then the top two vote-getters in each race would face off in the general election. If only two candidates file for a race, then both would forgo the primary and be placed on the general ballot in November.
Read the Tulsa World story here.
3/27/24
8/11/24
3/27/24
Process to open up Oklahoma's primary elections underway
KOCO 5 Oklahoma City - A push is underway in Oklahoma to get rid of Republican and Democratic primaries and open them up to every voter.
The fate of the state's primaries could be in the hands of voters. Supporters of opening up Oklahoma's primaries said they want to do this through a ballot initiative question.
"Open primaries connect voters to government," said Margaret Kobos, the founder of Oklahoma United. "All politicians are going to be more interested in what we all think."
Democratic primaries are currently open to Independent voters, while Republican and Libertarian primaries are only open to members of their party.
3/21/24
8/11/24
3/27/24
.OKLAHOMA CITY – Oklahomans may get a chance to change the election process by ending closed primaries.
Oklahoma supporters of open primaries are working on an initiative petition to let voters decide whether or not a massive change is needed.
Margaret Kobos is CEO and founder of Oklahoma United, founded in 2021 to bring common sense solutions that engage the electorate and create better connections between government and the people.
“The version we find most popular is truly an open primary with a single primary ballot,” Kobos said. “All candidates would be on it.”
Party identification would still be listed, she said. The primary runoff would be eliminated, she said.
The top two vote-getters would advance to the general election, she said.
“It puts the emphasis in an election on the candidates and the issues,” Kobos said.
“It also makes the elected officials accountable to all voters, not just the voters in their own party.”
2/9/24
1/21/24
1/21/24
Editorial: Update Oklahoma election laws to give voters freedom to make more candidate choices
Oklahoma’s bottom ranking in voter turnout is likely the consequence of the state’s woefully outdated and exclusionary election laws. It’s time Oklahoma voters demand a better marketplace for ideas and the freedom to make choices.
In 2022, nearly 900,000 Oklahoma voters were shut out of voting in contested races, according to a national analysis by the Lee Enterprises Public Service Journalism team. About 58% (31 of 53) of those contested state and federal races were decided outright in primaries that were closed to all but party members.
It doesn’t have to be that way. The majority of states have some form of open primaries and have much more engaged civic involvement as a result. Oklahoma has examples within the state showing how open ballots encourage better public discourse.
For example, the Tulsa mayor and city councilors are elected on nonpartisan, open ballots. Campaigns are focused on selling as many voters on their ideas as possible. Candidates knock on more doors, public forums cater to all constituents, and every eligible Tulsa voter has the freedom to choose who they feel has the best pitch.
The ballot is simple: All candidates are put on a list. The top two winners go to a general election, unless one gets more than 50% of the vote. For decades, the result has been a diverse council with a range of perspectives and backgrounds, and mayors who seek a consensus among city leaders and residents.
Tulsa has thrived under this election system. Oklahoma would benefit by doing something similar.
Moving to open primaries is about freedom and choice. Political parties still play a role, and some states put the party designation next to candidates’ names on ballots. The reform would be updating the system to involve all voters in deciding on government representatives.
This isn’t a radical idea. But pushback will come from political party leaders and sitting elected officials fearful of losing power or influence. If a party’s candidates have the best vision and plans for an office, then voters will respond — that’s the free market approach.
However, incumbents got elected because this current system works for them, even if it’s not working for all Oklahoma voters. They won’t support a change.
That leaves the initiative petition route, which can be onerous and expensive. It’s also the mechanism used often in Oklahoma when lawmakers ignore the will of the people.
The biggest threat to the American form of democracy is voter apathy, not fraud. Instead of wringing hands over whether to watermark mailed ballots or require more identification, remove obstacles preventing voters from casting a ballot.
Give voters the freedom to consider all candidates and all ideas. That’s the truest form of a representative republic.
1/21/24
1/21/24
1/21/24
Group works to change Oklahoma to open primary system
NewsOn6, Tulsa - Election season is well underway in several states and Oklahoma primary elections are coming up in March. Here in Oklahoma, we have partially closed primaries. Two election experts, Jeremy Gruber with Open Primaries and Margaret Kobos with Oklahoma United, joined News on 6 to discuss the push for open primary elections and what that would mean for voters.
Oklahoma’s partially closed primary means that the democratic party allows people registered as independent to vote in their elections, but the republican party only allows people registered as republican.
“Oklahoma is one of only 14 states that have closed primaries, which means independent voters can't vote in primary elections,” Gruber said. “Around the country, independents are the largest group of voters now in the country. Just this week, Gallup came out with their polling that found 43 percent of voters are independent and that's happening right here in Oklahoma. Twenty percent of Oklahoma voters are independent. It's the fastest growing group of voters in the state. They can't vote in primary elections, the elections that matter.”
Oklahoma United is a non-partisan organization that is working to change our partially closed primaries to open primaries.
“We're seeking reforms and answers to a system that is not serving everybody[...] The first thing that you look at when you research this are the is the exclusion of independent voters in the primary system,” Kobos said “We want all voters to have the freedom to vote for the person they want. The person in their minds is the best person for the job, regardless of where they come from. And we want all independents to be able to vote equally as a party member. You shouldn't have to be forced to join a party in order to exercise your constitutional right to vote in elections that you're funding.”
For more information on Oklahoma’s partially closed election and why groups like Oklahoma United are pushing to change it. Watch the full interview.
1/25/24
1/21/24
1/25/24
Closed primaries shut out millions of voters, divide Americans into "Warring Camps"
Two poll workers unintentionally rattled David Bohlken two decades ago when he walked into a petite country church near Tulsa to vote for his first time as an Oklahoman.
They wouldn’t offer him a ballot. Only a cup of coffee.
“The ballot got flipped upside down on me. I wasn’t even allowed to look at it,” Bohlken said, noting that the two apologetic poll volunteers — his friends — were just doing their jobs. “That kind of made me feel bad.”
Bohlken grew up in Minnesota, a state with open primaries, where all registered voters may participate in any party’s primary election. He didn’t realize his status as a registered independent in Oklahoma would exclude him from partisan primaries.
Millions of voters in states like Oklahoma with primaries that are at least partially closed are shut out from voting in contested races because of their independent status or party affiliation, denying participation in elections their tax dollars fund.
In some cases, those primaries decide who wins the seat outright.
Across nine closed or partially closed primary states, about two in five registered voters in districts with contested U.S. Congressional primary elections in the 2022 midterms were barred from casting ballots in those races, according to a Lee Enterprises Public Service Journalism team analysis of publicly available data.
The 2024 election season has officially begun and voters are heading out to the polls and casting their votes for who they think deserves the party's nomination in primary elections. But in states with closed primaries, voters find themselves not being able to vote for the candidate they want, or be excluded from voting entirely.
Similarly, about two in five registered voters throughout those nine states in districts with contested state legislative primaries in 2022 were prohibited from participation.
In 181 of those 590 contested federal and state primaries, disallowed voters were entirely blocked from a choice in who represents them because the primaries decided who won the office — either directly or with an uncontested general election, according to Lee Enterprises’ analysis.
That’s almost one in three districts where the excluded voters had no say in their representation.
Jeremy Gruber, a lawyer and senior vice president of Open Primaries, a national advocacy group, frames the issue in stark terms.
“There's a country where when you vote in the general election, half the time there's only one person on the ballot. Almost every time it's an uncompetitive election, and half the voters in the country are barred from the first round or limited,” Gruber said. “And even the voters that can participate are segregated into warring camps. People would say, ‘Well, that doesn't make sense. That doesn't sound democratic.’
“‘Where is that? What strange country has that system?’ But that's us. That's our system.”
Gruber is part of a burgeoning movement across the U.S. to open up primaries so all registered voters can participate.
As the 2024 election season begins, there are already about a dozen active campaigns in states across the U.S., including Oklahoma, Arizona, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Oregon, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico and Idaho.
Proponents who are pushing for changes — through citizen-led ballot initiatives, state law changes or even lawsuits — say open primaries strengthen American democracy by allowing all registered voters equal access to taxpayer-funded elections while broadening voter choice and improving outcomes through competition.
1/20/24
11/21/23
1/25/24
Independents are Oklahoma's fastest growing voter block. What does that mean for Republicans?
Unaffiliated voters are the fastest-growing large voting block in Oklahoma, according to the latest statistics released by the Oklahoma State Election Board.
Nearly one of every five Oklahoma voters registered as an independent. Four years ago, independents made up just 15% of voters — now it's just shy of 19%.
Since the last presidential election, the number of people who refused to pick a party has risen 31% with the addition of more than 100,000 independent registrations.
How do Oklahoma voters compare to national trends?
It's a trend seen across the United States, particularly with young voters. National polling and Oklahoma-specific data indicate they are more politically disengaged than older generations, but also might be less polarized. A survey of more than 4,000 young adults showed 61% don’t align with either major political party.
Independents aren't the only voting block seeing record numbers, though. The third-largest party in the state, the Libertarian Party of Oklahoma, has nearly doubled in size to 21,910 registered voters since 2020.
"It's an indication that even in Oklahoma, as Republican-dominated a state as we are, there's a growing dissatisfaction with both parties," said political scientist James Davenport.
Republican stronghold remains in Oklahoma
Despite that, he said, there's no indication that Republican dominance over state government is under threat. The GOP saw smaller but still impressive growth since 2020, and now makes up over 50% of voters.
Democrats continued to see plummeting registration numbers over the past four years, losing more than 85,000 voters. The once-powerful Oklahoma Democratic Party now has just 28.4% of the voter share, down from 35.3% in 2020.
Democrats enjoyed decades of local political dominance; between statehood and 1973, four out of five state legislators in Oklahoma were Democrats. The party was the major political force largely because of its appeal to rural voters, especially in the southeast, a region dubbed "Little Dixie" because of political and cultural ties to the Southern United States.
Those conservative rural strongholds now register with the Republican Party. Today, it's hard for a Democrat to win outside of an urban area.
"It's an amazing reversal from decades long gone, in which those numbers were completely flipped for Republicans and Democrats," said Davenport, an associate dean and professor at Rose State College. "Democrats, I think, have a challenge, and there's obviously going to be some kind of threshold where they will fall below. And the question is, what are they going to do to start increasing that?"
Can independents vote in primaries in Oklahoma?
Seven years ago, the Oklahoma Democratic Party agreed to let independents vote in Democratic primaries. So far, they are the only party to schedule open primary elections and recently announced that the practice will continue through 2025.
There is a growing movement in Oklahoma to mandate open primaries as a way to counter partisan extremism in government. A group of influential local and state officials recently met to discuss how Oklahoma could restructure the way politicians are elected and hope to present voters with an initiative petition within a few years.
The number of registered voters of any affiliation grew over 10% since 2020, according to the state Election Board. As of Jan. 15, there were 2.3 million registered voters, up from 2.1 million in 2020.
If you'd like to vote or change your voter registration, you can now complete forms at the state Election Board's website. Oklahoma became the 41st state to adopt online voter registration last year, allowing eligible U.S. citizens with a state driver’s license or state-issued ID card to complete the entire process online.
11/21/23
11/21/23
11/21/23
Should changes be made to Oklahoma's primary system?
KOCO 5 heard from Oklahoma United for Progress and got a reaction from Oklahoma's Republican Party. Watch here.