Oklahomans for Ballot Access Reform (OBAR) has re-launched the initiative that would ask the Oklahoma voters if they wish to ease the ballot access laws. Oklahoma law requires initiative petitions to be completed within 90 days, but the group backing the initiative chooses its own 90-day period. The original petition was launched on September 15, but since it was mostly dependent on volunteer circulators, it had only collected 2,700 signatures during the first three weeks.
The new campaign will run from October 15 through January 13, and will depend on paid circulators. The Committee will be quite careful to make sure all circulators are Oklahoma residents. The new initiative has been re-worded somewhat. The biggest change is that the vote test for a party to remain on the ballot will be 2%, not 1% as in the first attempt. Circulators of the first attempt got a sense that some voters thought a 1% vote test is too easy. The national median vote test of all 50 states is 2%, so the new initiative can honestly tell voters that the initiative merely will put Oklahoma into the national average. The vote test is 2% of the vote for any statewide race at either of the last two elections. Oklahoma has approximately 10 statewide partisan races in mid-term years.
For more information, see www.okvoterchoice.org. If you have donated to this initiative, your contribution has not been wasted. The first attempt only used up $1,500.
Oklahoma state officials recommend that an initiative be submitted eight months before the election. The new initiative attempt will be complete on January 13, so, assuming it qualifies, it will appear on the November 2008 ballot. Any attempt to qualify the initiative earlier than that might have meant that the initiative would have appeared on the primary ballot, which would have been a strategic error, since independents can’t vote in Oklahoma primaries (except they can vote on ballot questions). It is desired that the initiative be placed on a ballot when sizeable numbers of independent voters will be voting.
The Republicans and Democrats are doing in the United Statyes what other political parties have done in other nations, cancelling free elections so that their candidates cannot be challenged in elections. The Nazi Party did the same thing in Germany. The Communist Party did the same thing in the Soviet Union. The goal of any political party is to limit the number of candidates for office and control the votes of the voters. The extreme example of this was the Soviet Union interpretation of free elections in which people were allowed to vote for Communist Party candidates.
Political parties in democratic nations often produce the same result, such as we now see in Venezuela, where only one Venezuelan is deemed eligible to be elected leader of that country.
Political parties in the United States are terrified of independent voters because at the present time Americans are registering as independents faster than members of political parties. Their primary goal nationwide at the present time is to prevent independent voters from becoming candidates for office. Political parties in the United States have regarded the voters of this nation as their personal property since the election of 1800.
Robert B. Winn
Mr. Winn, I agree with you. This is precisely why we started this initiative. The democrats and republicans in control of our government like the monopoly the status they have attained. So, they will fight like hell. We have tried for about 10 years to work with the state legislature in Oklahoma to make this change, they refused. We have even sued the state and the state supreme court refused to hear our case. The only voice we have left is our own. We can not count on our elected representatives to do this, we had to take matters into our own hands. I appreciate your thoughtful comments.