Law & Principles, Good Government

Accused criminal’s reelection highlights Oklahoma election-date problem

January 20, 2026

Ray Carter

During the Dec. 1 to Dec. 3, 2025, filing period, only three candidates filed for three seats on the Warr Acres City Council. All three were incumbents. All three were reelected without a vote being cast.

Within a week, one of the three reelected-without-a-race incumbents—Warr Acres City Council member Jason Cole—was arrested and later charged with first-degree rape and five counts of lewd or indecent acts with a child. Cole is accused of inappropriately touching three children and showing them pornography.

Critics say Cole’s election is an example—albeit among the most extreme—of the problems created by conducting many Oklahoma elections on obscure dates with little public awareness.

Had Cole been arrested prior to the candidate filing period, it is possible he would have drawn an opponent. But it’s also possible the outcome would have been the same since very few people were even aware that candidate filing was underway or an election looming, as demonstrated by a 2025 school-board race in an Oklahoma City-area district.

Filing for an open school board seat in the Crutcho school district occurred in December 2024. When filing for the Crutcho school-board seat closed, no candidate had filed for the office.

Across Oklahoma, numerous elections impacting millions of dollars in taxpayer resources are conducted with little to no public awareness or voter participation because the elections are held on obscure dates far removed from November.

Some lawmakers believe it’s time to move many elections to dates that are more likely to generate public awareness and voter participation.

“There are far too many people already not involved in our elections without scheduling elections on dates that minimize public awareness,” said state Rep. Chris Banning, R-Bixby. “We have to move our elections. It’s imperative that we hold elections when the public knows to vote, especially when you’re talking about school-board positions that control the largest portion of our state-allocated budget.”

Senate Bill 6, by state Sen. Ally Seifried and Banning, would move school-board elections to August for primaries or November for runoffs.

During the 2025 legislative session, SB 6 passed out of the Oklahoma Senate on a 33-10 vote and then passed out of two state House committees, but it did not receive a vote on the floor of the Oklahoma House of Representatives. The bill remains eligible for a House floor vote in the 2026 session.

Oklahoma is currently one of only 12 states mandating that school-board elections be conducted off-cycle on low-turnout dates for which there is little voter awareness.

Currently, school-board primary elections are held on the second Tuesday in February every year, unless there is a presidential election, while school-board general elections are conducted on the first Tuesday of every April.

There are approximately 2,500 school-board members elected across Oklahoma. Because of the obscure dates those elections are held, turnout is almost nonexistent in most races.

Research done by Americans for Prosperity–Oklahoma found that turnout for the April 2, 2024, school-board elections in Oklahoma averaged 6 percent of voters. In comparison, 64 percent of eligible Oklahoma voters participated in the November 2024 general election.

State Sen. Dusty Deevers, R-Elgin, believes bond and tax proposals should also be moved to higher-turnout election dates since those proposals impact the finances of working Oklahomans.

Senate Bill 538, by Deevers and state Rep. Kevin West, would require bond and tax proposals for both cities and school districts to be placed on the November general-election ballot. The bill passed out of the Senate General Government Committee during the 2025 session, but did not receive a floor vote in the Senate.

“SB 538 is a necessary step to restore integrity to public elections. Elections are a public trust, and that trust is violated when votes of the people are quietly buried in low-turnout months that few citizens even realize are happening,” Deevers said. “When bond elections are tucked away in February or April, the result is not an honest reflection of the community’s will. By moving these votes to November, we place them where Oklahomans already expect to participate—alongside state and federal elections—ensuring transparency, awareness, and a truer measure of public consent.”

The 2026 legislative session begins Feb. 2.