Reforms Needed to Make Ballot Measure Process More Accessible

Interim study examines legislative efforts to undermine Oklahoma’s citizen-led initiative and referendum process.

September 21, 2023

A call for reforming Oklahoma’s initiative and referendum laws to make the ballot measure process more accessible for all citizens was sounded from the Oklahoma State Capitol recently as experts testified during an interim study presented by Representative Mickey Dollens on September 18, 2023.

The interim study – held during a meeting of the Oklahoma House Elections and Ethics Committee – scrutinized legislative strategies aimed at undermining the citizen-led ballot initiative process and explored potential reforms that could strengthen direct democracy. Speakers from across the nation – in person and over video conference – mostly agreed that our state’s ballot measure laws are among the most country’s most restrictive. From its too-short signature gathering period to the cumbersome use of pen and paper to collect signatures, the laws regulating the ballot measure need updating, the speakers said. To modernize the system and fill in gaps where more rules are needed, the following proposed reforms were suggested:

1.     Extending the mandated 90-day signature gathering window (Oklahoma has the nation’s shortest petition circulation period).

2.     Allowing signature gatherers to use electronic devices to collect petition signatures (state law requires signatures be gathered on legal size paper).

3.     A signature verification deadline for the Oklahoma Secretary of State’s office (currently none exists).

4.     Holding state question elections only on general elections dates.

5.     Banning foreign campaign spending on state ballot measures (no such law currently exists).

6.     Fully funding the Oklahoma Ethics Commission.

As recently as 2009, a bill passed the state legislature that would have extended the signature gathering period to one year, but it was vetoed by then Governor Brad Henry, said Cole Allen, policy fellow at the Oklahoma Policy Institute. “Our lawmakers in very recent history have understood and worked to protect the importance and the centrality of direct democracy in our state, understanding that since 1907 Oklahoma’s population has grown significantly and the 90-day time period has become restrictive to accessing their rights as guaranteed in the constitution,” Allen said.

The Oklahoma Senate took the opposite tact this spring in passing SB 518, which would have restricted Oklahoma’s ballot measure process by charging petitioners $750 for publication costs, adding more stringent signature verification requirements, and increasing the protest period from ten to twenty days. The bill went dormant in the House, but it could be reconsidered during the 2024 session.

Other states have started using electronic devices to gather signatures rather than pen and paper, said Ben Williams, elections and redistricting program principal for the National Convention of State Legislators. However, using something like an iPad to collect and verify signatures is not as common in the 26 states that have ballot measure access as pen and paper, Williams said.

Dollens took issue with a $300,000 state contract issued in 2021 that outsourced petition signature verification to Western Petition Systems, owned by pollster Bill Shapard. The legislature passed House Bill 3826 in 2020, granting authority to the secretary of state’s office to purchase software to help verify ballot measure signatures.

The contract was awarded after a no-bid process, and Western Petition Systems’ first test, verifying signatures for State Question 820 in 2022, legalizing recreational marijuana, resulted in delays which cost the ballot measure’s organizers a chance at being on the 2022 general election ballot, said Michelle Tilley, who worked on the Oklahomans for Sensible Marijuana Laws campaign. The ballot measure was ultimately defeated in a special election on March 7. “I believe in the power of democracy to change lives because I have seen it with my own eyes,” Tilley said. “It’s very important that we preserve this process.”

With a signature verification deadline been in place, ballot measures like State Question 820 would have better chances of being included on general election ballots, ensuring higher voter turnout and saving taxpayers the expense of holding a special election, Dollens said. “I know we can save the state millions of dollars by designating state questions to general elections.”

In a 2021 decision, the Federal Election Commission ruled that foreign nationals – individuals, corporations, even governments – can legally fund ballot measure campaigns in states that have not banned the practice, said Aaron McKean, legal counsel at Campaign Legal Center, a Washington D.C.-based nonprofit. This is one of two critical gaps in state law that allow foreign interests to influence elections at the state and federal level, McKean said. The other allows foreign interests to funnel money through corporations, super PACs, for electioneering purposes. “These gaps represent an opportunity for states to stop foreign interests from spending in our elections and thereby undermining our right to democratic self-governance,” he said.

Dennis Willard, who led a campaign this year in Ohio to defeat a ballot measure in that would have required future ballot measures to reach a 60 percent vote threshold, said that recent trends across the nation point to state legislatures attempting to pass bills that would make initiatives and referenda more difficult to pass. Ohio’s ballot measure process was codified in 1912 during the Progressive Era when their state legislature was thought to be in the pockets of robber barons, indifferent to the will of the people, Willard said. “People in Ohio hold this idea very sacred.”

One critic to the ballot measure process, Trent England, executive director of Save our States, a group that works to protect the Electoral College voting system, said that ballot measures are a conflicting, redundant form of democracy because voters already elect representatives to voice their will in local, state, and federal government. Ballot measures breed corruption because of the amount of money it costs to pass and defeat them, England said. “It really is who can spend the most money.”

Dollens countered England’s argument by suggesting that the Oklahoma Ethics Commission be fully funded so that it can hold those giving and spending money in political campaigns accountable. In July, then OEC Executive Director Ashley Kemp resigned because a “lack of adequate funding” hindered the agency from doing its job of enforcing Oklahoma’s campaign finance laws.