A bill that would make dramatic changes to the state’s initiative and referendum process cleared a Senate committee last week and is expected to be heard by the full Senate soon.
Supporters of the measure said the bill would “bring greater transparency to the initiative petition process by requiring paid signature gatherers to disclose who is paying them and stipulating that only Oklahoma residents or entities can pay people to collect signatures for an initiative petition.”
Opponents of the measure said the bill is an attempt to restrict public input and give the Legislature more authority than the general public.
The measure’s co-author, Senate President Pro Tempore Lonnie Paxton, R-Tuttle, acknowledged the bill does add new restrictions — namely on how signatures for a petition are gathered.
“Someone who wants an initiative petition would need to get a little more cross section of the state of Oklahoma,” Paxton said Thursday afternoon. “They can’t just focus on one area of the state.”
Oklahoma is one of several states with initiative petition process
Paxton said Oklahoma was one of only a few states in the U.S. that have an initiative petition process. He added that he would argue that the process doesn’t always work well. However, records show that more than half the country — 26 states — have some form of initiative-and-referendum process.
That number includes several states surrounding Oklahoma, such as Arkansas, Colorado and Missouri and the state which Oklahoma modeled its own initiative process after — Nebraska.
“Our process isn’t that difficult,” Paxton said. “What happens is that sometimes an issue gets put on the ballot then gets diluted by (those) who have the money to put the ads out there.”
Paxton said Oklahomans elect legislators to make decisions, adding “and we’re responsible to our voters.”
He said he didn’t want to do away with the process, but added he didn’t like it when signatures from a petition could be gathered in just one or two big cities to place it on the ballot.
Sen. David Bullard is shown during the House and Senate organizational day of the 90th Legislature in January.
In a statement about the bill, Sen. David Bullard, R-Durant, the bill’s author, said Senate Bill 1027 establishes that no more than 10% of the total number of signatures to get an initiative petition on the ballot come from any one county with more than 400,000 residents.
Bullard said no more than 4% of signatures shall come from any one county with a population of less than 400,000. He said this change will require campaigns to collect signatures from a minimum of around 20 counties, which he believes will give rural Oklahomans a greater say in whether an initiative petition qualifies for the ballot.
“These are much-needed changes to protect Oklahoma’s initiative petition process from out-of-state interest groups who want to change our state laws and Constitution,” Bullard said. “We need clear transparency and commonsense guardrails on how initiative petition campaigns collect signatures, who’s behind them and who’s funding them.”
Secretary of state would be able to reject initiative petitions under bill
However, an analysis of the bill shows the measure would shift authority away from the Oklahoma Supreme Court by giving the secretary of state — a political appointee with no legal training — the power to reject initiative petitions based on subjective criteria.
In addition, the bill would require petition signers to verify they have read an entire ballot title before signing and would eliminate paid petition circulators by prohibiting per-signature compensation. It also would require the circulators to be Oklahoma residents.
The bill also would require additional financial disclosures and reporting requirements for grassroots organizations, and impose new limits on signature collection by capping the number of valid signatures from larger counties.
At least one nationally recognized expert on the U.S. Constitution said the bill’s restrictions on the initiative process are unconstitutional. Robert McCampbell, an Oklahoma City attorney who specializes in constitutional law, wrote that the bill was unconstitutional.
“The bill includes provisions that restrict petition circulators, prohibit out-of-state contributions, grant broad discretionary power to the secretary of state over citizen-initiated petitions, and retroactively change the procedure for initiative petitions. Each of these provisions conflicts with well-established legal precedent,” McCampbell wrote in a four-page memo analyzing the measure.
The government, McCampbell said, is not free to “impose burdensome roadblocks to the citizen initiative process.”
“The courts are unanimous that circulating a petition is ‘core political speech’ where First Amendment protection is at its ‘zenith,'” he wrote. “The restrictions on core political speech embodied in SB 1027 cannot survive scrutiny under the First Amendment.”
Other opponents of the bill, echoing McCampbell, said SB 1027 would “make it dramatically harder for Oklahomans to bring issues directly to a vote, undermining one of the most fundamental avenues for public participation in policymaking.”
Senate Pro Tem Lonnie Paxton speaks during the House and Senate organizational day of the 90th Legislature.
“(The) vote to advance SB 1027 is a disappointing step backward for democracy in Oklahoma. By making it harder for citizens to bring issues to the ballot, lawmakers are silencing the voices of everyday Oklahomans and limiting public participation in policymaking,” said Margaret Kobos, founder of Oklahoma United. “The right to petition is fundamental to our state’s history and this bill adds unnecessary barriers that will make it nearly impossible for grassroots efforts to succeed.”
Bob Burke, a local attorney and expert in Oklahoma history, said the bill would diminish and lessen the rights of people to petition their government. “It’s 180 degrees from what the Founding Fathers of this state intended for the future,” he said.
Burke said delegates to the 1906 Oklahoma Constitutional Convention were concerned about a governor or the Legislature being too powerful. “They were so concerned about that, that in Article Five, Section Two, the following words appeared: The first power reserved by the people is the initiative,” he said. “Then it goes on to say the second power is the referendum.”
“I don’t understand why anyone is against the citizens of the state petitioning their government,” Burke said. “If there is a concern that the executive and legislative branches are not taking care of, then the members of the Constitutional Convention wanted to have an easy road — a convenient way (for the public) to petition their government.”
Senate Bill 1027 passed the committee in a 7-2 vote. The bill is now eligible to be heard by the full Senate.
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Bill to dramatically change Oklahoma’s initiative petition advances
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