Good Government

Oklahoma group launches effort to adopt California voting system

November 19, 2024

Ray Carter

Officials with Oklahoma United announced they have launched an initiative-petition effort to place State Question 835 on the ballot in 2026, asking Oklahoma voters to effectively end primary elections and instead replace them with a June general election followed by a November runoff general election.

The proposed system is similar to California’s election process. The California system has often resulted in November elections in which voters have the choice of only two candidates from the same political party.

SQ 835 backers claimed changing Oklahoma’s elections would increase voter participation, but data from California races that already use the SQ 835 model undermine that claim.

Under SQ 835, Oklahomans would be asked to amend the state constitution to prohibit party primaries.

Instead, all candidates from all parties would be placed on a single “jungle primary” ballot in June. All Oklahomans could vote in that de facto general election and the top two vote recipients would then proceed to a de facto general election runoff in November.

Supporters have 90 days to collect at least 172,993 signatures to qualify the proposal for a November 2026 vote of the people.

Margaret Kobos, founder and CEO of Oklahoma United, claimed the change would cause more people to vote in Oklahoma elections.

“All voters get more choices,” Kobos said. “Candidates will compete.”

While voters may have more candidates listed on a ballot, turnout for California’s “jungle primary” election has been much lower than turnout in Oklahoma’s general elections under the current state system.

Turnout in this year’s November general election in Oklahoma, which included the presidential race, hit 64.42 percent. Turnout in the 2022 general election, in which the governor’s race topped the ballot, reached 50.35 percent.

In contrast, during the June 7, 2022 jungle primary election in California, just 27 percent of turnout-eligible voters participated. That ballot included a California governor’s race that drew 28 candidates from all parties, multiple other statewide races that drew numerous candidates, two U.S. Senate races that drew at least 10 candidates apiece, and congressional races.

Julie Knutson, president and CEO of The Oklahoma Academy, called Oklahoma’s current election system “a tool for political insiders,” and argued that candidates do not focus on their broader constituency when campaigning in Oklahoma’s general elections today.

“An open-primary election system also encourages candidates to appeal to a broader constituency,” Knutson said. “Instead of focusing solely on their party’s base, candidates would be incentivized to address the needs and concerns of the whole electorate.”

But in practice the California model has been known to advance two candidates from the same party even when a majority of voters in a district support the opposition party, meaning candidates who play to a minority partisan base can advance. That outcome could have occurred in Oklahoma in 2018 under the SQ 835 system.

In Oklahoma’s 2018 governor’s race, there were 10 candidates who filed to run as Republicans and two who filed to run as Democrats. In the June 2018 primary, 452,606 Oklahomans cast a vote for a Republican gubernatorial candidate compared to just 395,494 votes cast for a Democrat.

But under SQ 835, the November ballot that year would have pitted Democrat Drew Edmondson against Democrat Connie Johnson with no Republican option provided. Because the Republican vote was split 10 ways in the primary, no GOP candidate received more votes than the second-place finisher in the Democratic primary.

As a result, Oklahomans would have faced a choice of two Democrats in 2018 when in reality businessman Kevin Stitt won the November general election handily, receiving 54 percent of the vote to just 42 percent for the Democratic nominee.

California has seen many races in which voters’ choices are limited to members of the same party under the top-two system proposed in SQ 835.

In 2022, voters in California’s Fifteenth, Sixteenth, Twenty-Ninth, Thirtieth, Thirty-Fourth and Thirty-Seventh Congressional Districts had a choice of only two Democratic candidates when they went to the polls in November. The same thing occurred in five state Senate races and 13 state assembly races that year. In several other California state legislative races in 2022, the November ballot included only Republican candidates.

Former state Sen. A.J. Griffin was among those calling for an end to party primaries in Oklahoma.

Griffin said that under Oklahoma’s current process, “the elections that most people participate in, our November general elections, they don’t really matter.”

She noted that many races do not draw both Republican and Democrat candidates, saying 86 percent of Oklahoma’s federal, state, and county offices either had no general election in November or pitted a third party/independent candidate against a major party candidate.

But in many instances the voting populace in a state congressional or legislative district strongly favors one political party, causing members of the opposite party to forgo a campaign. The partisan advantage in such districts would remain even under the California model advocated by SQ 835 backers, and they did not offer any reason to expect more candidates to typically file in districts where one party is at a significant disadvantage.

Backers of SQ 835 also complained that registered independents cannot vote in Republican primary elections, although the Democratic Party allows independents to vote in Democratic primary elections. As a result, SB 835 supporters noted independents have to wait for the November general election to vote.

However, those who register as independent proactively choose not to align with a political party or participate in a political party’s primary process, and independents can easily change their registration if they prefer to vote in a primary.

Many backing SQ 835 have Democratic ties

Many of those promoting SQ 835 have a history of supporting Democratic candidates or liberal causes.

Data on Followthemoney.org indicates that Kobos has been a campaign contributor to a range of candidates, including 2022 Oklahoma Democratic gubernatorial candidate Joy Hofmeister and 2018 Democratic gubernatorial candidate Edmondson.

Oklahoma Ethics Commission records show the same thing, as well as Kobos contributions to the Democratic Party of Oklahoma, the Democrats of the Oklahoma State Senate PAC, and contributions to The Oklahoma Project, a group that ran attack ads targeting Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt in 2022.

In 2018, the Oklahoma Academy endorsed repeal of the Oklahoma Constitution’s provision requiring legislative supermajorities to increase state taxes, and called for allowing municipalities to impose a local property tax and a local sales tax on services.

The group’s 2018 report declared that conservative populism “dominates Oklahoma’s political landscape and has produced a dire commitment to a low tax structure.”

Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt also endorsed a California-style election system in a release.

While technically a registered Republican, Holt authored a column this year in a Pennsylvania media outlet indicating he would not support Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump but would instead “vote for virtue.”

Opponents suggested partisan intentions are the true motive behind SQ 835.

Lieutenant Governor Matt Pinnell, a former chairman of the Oklahoma Republican Party, said SQ 835 is not meant to benefit voters but to reduce the influence of many Oklahomans.

“At best, the push to mandate open primaries is a solution in search of a problem, and at worst, it is a thinly veiled attempt to weaken Republican voters in choosing the nominees to represent our party,” Pinnell said. “Oklahoma is a conservative state, and Republicans hold all the statewide and federally elected positions and supermajorities in the legislature for a simple reason: our values and principles represent the will of our state’s voters. Every county in Oklahoma voted for Donald Trump in November.”