Former Gov. Frank Keating and former Attorneys General Scott Pruitt and John O’Connor are among those urging the Oklahoma Supreme Court to uphold newly enacted initiative-petition reforms.

In a brief filed with the court, Keating, Pruitt, and O’Connor noted that they have “observed firsthand the deficiencies of the prior initiative petition framework, with Oklahomans continuing to lose their voice at the hands of outside special interest groups.”

The Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs’ Center for Law & Liberty and the Plaxico Law Firm are representing Keating, Pruitt, and O’Connor.

Senate Bill 1027, by state Sen. David Bullard and House Speaker Kyle Hilbert, made several transparency reforms to Oklahoma’s initiative-petition process.

Among other things, the new law requires initiative-petition campaigns to collect signatures equal to no more than 11.5 percent of the votes cast in any county during the most recent statewide general election (when seeking to change state law), or 20.8 percent (when seeking to amend the Oklahoma Constitution, which requires more signatures to advance to the ballot).

That change would require petitions to reach out to voters in at least 20 Oklahoma counties out of the 77 statewide. In contrast, under the system in place prior to SB 1027’s enactment, some petitions collected more than two-thirds of signatures from only two counties and largely ignored voters throughout most of the state.

SB 1027 opponents have challenged the law in court, claiming the provision requiring signature-collection from a larger swath of Oklahoma violates Article V, Section 2 of the Oklahoma Constitution.

However, that section of the constitution only requires that petitions collect signatures equal to 8 percent (to change state law) and 15 percent (to change the Oklahoma Constitution) of the votes cast in the last general election to place a measure on the ballot. Article V, Section 2 contains no language forbidding regulations that require those signatures to be gathered from across the state rather than in only a handful of locations.

In their brief, Keating, Pruitt, and O’Connor defend SB 1027’s requirement that initiative petitions collect signatures from a larger share of the state.

“As native Oklahomans, and current Oklahoma residents, the Honorable Frank Keating, the Honorable E. Scott Pruitt, and the Honorable John M. O’Connor support legislation that empowers each Oklahoman’s voice,” the brief stated. “SB 1027’s geographical limitation safeguards against populous counties with widespread out-of-state influence from singlehandedly determining Oklahoma law without any input from individuals residing in rural counties.”

The three men noted that other states have enacted similar geographic limitations to require initiative-petition efforts to establish statewide support.

“Without a requirement of attaining a modicum of support from a wide cross-section of voters, rural counties in particular are entirely shut out of the process,” Keating, Pruitt, and O’Connor warn in their brief.

They noted that an initiative petition seeking to change state law would currently require 92,263 signatures to reach the ballot.

“There are over five times that number of registered voters in Oklahoma County alone,” Keating, Pruitt, and O’Connor noted in their brief. “In other words, a sponsor of a ballot measure could attain all the required signatures in just one of Oklahoma’s seventy-seven counties.”

The three state leaders said initiative-petition efforts should reflect a true desire among a swath of Oklahomans to change state law or the state constitution, but warned the prior system gave disproportionate power to well-funded campaigns, often by out-of-state special interests.

“SB 1027 requires that even a well-funded campaign succeeds based on broader support than finances alone,” the three men stated in their brief.

The brief also noted that Article V of the Oklahoma Constitution “enshrines the Legislature’s policymaking authority to ‘make suitable provisions’ for regulating the initiative petition process,” and that the Oklahoma Supreme Court has “explicitly acknowledged the Legislature’s power to enact legislation restricting initiative petition procedure” in the past.

State law regulating initiatives and referendums dates to 1910.

Officials with Oklahoma United have opposed SB 1027’s reforms, viewing the new law as a threat to their initiative-petition effort. The group’s proposal would require that all Oklahoma candidates—Democrats, Republicans and independents—be placed on a single primary ballot with the two candidates receiving the most votes advancing to the general-election ballot.

Oklahoma United’s proposed system largely mirrors California’s election system, which routinely limits voters’ general-election choices to two candidates from the same political party.

Had the Oklahoma United’s plan been in place in 2018, Oklahoma voters would have been forced to choose between two Democrats for governor even though far more voters cast ballots for Republican candidates in that year’s primaries.