Law & Principles

Oklahoma Supreme Court ruling opens door for California-style elections in Oklahoma

September 16, 2025

Ray Carter

An effort to replace Oklahoma’s current election system with one like California’s model, which often limits voters’ general-election choices to two Democrats with no alternatives, can proceed under recent decisions issued by the Oklahoma Supreme Court.

The court also held that the signature-collection process, which could place the California model before Oklahoma voters, will not be subject to reforms passed by the Oklahoma Legislature this year.

A group calling itself Oklahoma United is seeking to eliminate Oklahoma’s current election system. The current system allows Republican voters to pick Republican nominees in party primaries while Democratic voters do the same in their party’s primaries, with the two parties’ candidates then facing off in the November general election along with any independent candidates who file for an office.

Instead, Oklahoma United’s State Question 836 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. That would largely mirror California elections, where voters’ November choices are often limited to two Democrats and no Republicans.

Had 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.

During the 2025 legislative session, state lawmakers voted to reform Oklahoma’s initiative-petition process.

Among the reforms included in Senate Bill 1027, by state Sen. David Bullard and House Speaker Kyle Hilbert, the new law requires that initiative-petition campaigns 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 petition efforts to reach out to voters in at least 20 Oklahoma counties out of the 77 statewide. In contrast, under the initiative-petition 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.

Officials with Oklahoma United have opposed SB 1027’s reforms and filed legal challenges to prevent it from taking effect.

At the same time, the Oklahoma Republican Party filed a challenge to State Question 836, the so-called “open primary,” arguing that it violates the right of association conferred by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution since November candidates will be identified as the “Republican” or “Democratic” nominee without those individuals having actually been selected by registered voters from either party.

This week, the Oklahoma Supreme Court rejected that argument. The opinion issued by the court dismissed the Oklahoma Republican Party’s claim, saying that because State Question 836 “does not refer to candidates as nominees, it does not treat them as such, and the top two candidates proceed to the general election without regard to party affiliation.”

The court also issued orders regarding the challenges filed by officials with Oklahoma United seeking to prevent SB 1027’s initiative-petition reforms from taking effect.

In McVay v. Cockroft, the Oklahoma Supreme Court denied the Oklahoma United petitioners’ request for a stay of the 90-day signature-collection period for SQ 836. The court also denied the petitioners’ request that the provisions of SB 1027 not be applied to any other state question.

But in Setter v. Cockroft, the court issued a stay that prevents SB 1027 from taking effect with regard to SQ 836, meaning proponents can collect signatures primarily from only a handful of counties while ignoring voters across most of the state.