Tyranny of the majority

SB 1027 clears the Oklahoma Senate, would disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of voters.

March 31, 2025

Senator David Bullard (R-Durant) stood on the floor of the Oklahoma Senate on March 18 to deliver the closing debate for Senate Bill 1027.

Bullard, a history teacher by trade, referenced Alexis de Tocqueville, the nineteenth century French political philosopher. “We’re a people known to have on many occasions stand up to a tyrannical majority,” Bullard said, his voice echoing off the walls of the century-old chamber. “This bill is an example of standing against those who want to maintain a status quo, who do so, screaming at the top of their lungs, that you’re trying to take away their freedoms when the reality is you’re trying to expand and get more people involved.”

What existential threat was Bullard bravely standing up to oppose?

Oh, yeah. He was talking about Oklahoma voters.

SB 1027 would fundamentally suppress the process by which Oklahomans may propose and reject state laws—the initiative and referendum process. The bill would change several components of Oklahoma’s initiative petition statute, all in ways that would make it more difficult for proponents to file petitions, collect signatures, and fund their campaigns. It would deny a huge swath of Oklahoma voters, especially in the Oklahoma City and Tulsa metro areas, rights and privileges granted to them under the state and federal constitutions.

SB 1027 doesn’t protect Oklahomans from the tyranny of the majority. It is the tyranny of the majority.

After nearly two hours of questions and debate, the Senate passed SB 1027 by a party-line vote, 36 – 8. Now the bill heads to the Oklahoma House of Representatives, where eighty Republicans and nineteen Democrats will decide its fate.

What is so oppressive about Oklahoma’s initiative and referendum process that thirty-six state senators, including fifteen Oklahoma City and Tulsa-area members, voted to block hundreds of thousands of their own constituents from participating in a democratic process that dates to statehood? Thanks for asking; we’d love to tell you.

What SB 1027 changes

The most devastating change is a set of geographic restrictions dictating where signatures may be collected. Under SB 1027, only 10 percent of a petition’s required signatures could come from counties with a population over 400,000, according to the last federal census. Only Oklahoma County and Tulsa County—which combined account for 37 percent of the state’s population—fit that description. Additionally, just 4 percent of required signatures could come from counties with a population under 400,000, which represents the other seventy-five counties.

SB 1027 would give “more Oklahomans” the opportunity to “have a say in what questions qualify for the ballot,” Bullard said in a statement. But that’s not true. This legislation does not require more voters to sign a petition—it merely forces a different cross-section of voters to sign, at the expense of voters in Oklahoma and Tulsa counties.

According to an analysis of the effects SB 1027 would have, Oklahoma’s four largest counties by population—Oklahoma, Tulsa, Cleveland, and Canadian—contain 48 percent of the state’s voters but could only contribute 28 percent of the signatures to a petition. The other seventy-three counties (with 52 percent of state voters) would have to contribute the other 72 percent of signatures. Potentially, 96 - 98 percent of the voters in the largest four counties would be legally barred from the signature gathering phase.

That goes against the principle of “one person, one vote.” That is disenfranchisement.

The First Amendment forbids Congress from making laws prohibiting the right of the people “to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” The federal constitution supersedes state law.

Under SB 1027, only up to 3.6 percent of Oklahoma County voters and up to 4.3 percent of Tulsa County voters could sign a petition for a constitutional amendment, while 100 percent of voters in the twenty-three smallest counties could sign. The disparity for statutory initiative is even greater. Only up to 1.9 percent of Oklahoma County voters and 2.3 percent of Tulsa County voters could sign one of those petitions, while 100 percent of the eleven smallest counties could sign the same petition.

Why it matters‍

The tyranny of the majority is the philosophical principle that in a democracy, the voting majority, if left unchecked, has free reign to force its opinions and prejudices upon the voting minority. In Bullard’s analogy, Oklahoma’s urban voters are the tyrannical majority, and rural voters are the oppressed.

In the case of SB 1027, that argument just doesn’t hold up. Only 36 percent of the state’s voters live in the two largest counties. There is no urban majority, as Bullard suggests. Rural voters outnumber the urban ones. Besides, the idea that signature gatherers ignore rural counties is a myth. Proponents for State Question 802, to expand Medicaid, and State Question 832, to raise the state’s minimum wage, collected signatures from all seventy-seven counties, according to leaders from those campaigns.

It’s already extremely difficult to pass an initiative petition in Oklahoma because we have one of the nation’s strictest ballot measure processes. Compared to other states, the laws here that govern the initiative petition are extraordinarily prohibitive. Since statehood, only 116 initiatives have qualified for the ballot, and, of those, voters approved just 32 percent. Oklahoma has the highest per capita signature requirement for constitutional amendments at 15 percent of the total number of votes cast in the last gubernatorial election (currently 172,993). A statutory petition requires 8 percent of the same number of votes (currently 92,263). State law allows just ninety days to collect those signatures, the shortest signature gathering window in the nation.

Initiative petition campaigns are expensive. Because Oklahoma ballot measure campaigns have so little time to gather so many signatures, proponents often hire professional signature gatherers to complement the work of volunteers. The cost to hire signature gatherers can be millions. Additionally, since state law requires that the information provided by voters on a petition match their voter registration records, proponents typically aim to collect 30 to 40 percent more signatures than required to account for some signatures being invalidated due to incorrect data points (it could be as simple as someone writing down their nickname instead of their legal name, or a transposed birth date and month).

According to some ballot measure experts, the effects of SB 1027 could double the cost of signature gathering in Oklahoma. The bill would require that signature gatherers be registered voters, which would bar out-of-state signature gathering firms who currently do business here. Under SB 1027, compensation incentives such as pay-by-the-signature would be outlawed, and people and entities who reside outside of Oklahoma could no longer contribute to petition campaigns (political candidates are not held to the same standard). Paid signature gatherers would also have to display who is paying them. This sounds fair and transparent until you learn that the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission allows the proliferation of dark money into political campaigns.

The authors of SB 1027 and the legislators who vote for it want to hold Oklahoma voters to higher standards than they themselves are held to as political candidates. It’s another case of those in power working to retain their own power. It’s undemocratic and anti-American.

The nineteenth century English philosopher John Stuart Mill wrote about democracy and the tyranny of the majority in his seminal work, On Liberty. The will of the people, Mill wrote, “practically means the will of the most numerous or the most active part of the people.” That majority, Mill continued, “may desire to oppress a part of their number, and precautions are as much needed against this as against any other abuse of power. The limitation, therefore, of the power of government over individuals loses none of its importance when the holders of power are regularly accountable to the community, that is, to the strongest party therein.”

Indeed, “the only purpose for which power can rightfully be exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others,” Mill said.

At its core, SB 1027 harms the people by disproportionately valuing the will of some Oklahoma voters over others, all who share the same constitutionally guaranteed right to propose or reject state laws.

SB 1027 isn’t the law yet. Oklahomans can still stop it. To do so, you must contact your members in the House of Representatives and demand they vote no. If you truly wish to reserve for yourself “the power to propose laws and amendments to the Constitution and to enact or reject the same at the polls independent of the Legislature, and also reserve power at their own option to approve or reject at the polls any act of the Legislature,” as Article 5, Section 1 of the Oklahoma Constitution states, then you must rise in opposition to SB 1027.

The initiative petition serves as a check against the unbridled power of the supermajority. Kirkpatrick Policy Group calls on all Oklahomans to oppose SB 1027, not for themselves, but for others. For as Mill wrote, “the only part of the conduct of anyone for which he is amenable to society is that which concerns others.”

____________________