State Question 836 would have included all candidates for an office on the same ballot and allowed all registered voters to participate in primary elections, regardless of their party affiliation.
The Oklahoma Secretary of State's Office announced on March 5 that the question's supporters failed to gather the required number of valid signatures needed to get it on the ballot.
Supporters of the initiative submitted nearly 210,000 signatures to the Secretary of State in late January. The threshold was 172,993, but only 142,567 signatures were validated, meaning nearly 70,000 of the signatures collected were rendered invalid by the state's private third-party verifier, Western Petition Systems.
The Oklahoma-based startup is owned by long-time public opinion pollster Bill Shapard and while it has been deemed the most cost-effective way to modernize the process by state officials, some worry about the extra steps to verify signatures causing delays in moving initiatives along and potentially unforeseen mistakes that may exclude some eligible voters' signatures from being verified.
Andy Moore is the CEO of Let's Fix This, a nonpartisan nonprofit promoting voting and civic engagement and a regular contributor to KOSU's This Week in Oklahoma Politics podcast. He said that new rules passed by lawmakers in 2020 (when Western Petitions came on the scene) and most recently in 2024, with Sen. Julie Daniels' Senate Bill 518, have made it harder for supporters to get their initiatives on the ballot.
"It was Senate Bill 518…that changed what counts as far as a valid signature," Moore said. "On the page, there's all these first name, last name, all this stuff. And previously you had to match three out of five data points to the state's voter registration file. And the new bill changed it to be four out of five data points."
The data points are: first name, last name, house number, zip code, and month and day of birth.
Recently, two initiatives have been certified to appear on the ballot: State Question 820 to legalize recreational cannabis appeared on the special election ballot in March of 2023 and failed to pass, with about 60% of voters rejecting it.
State Question 832 to increase the state minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2029 is set to appear on the June 16 ballot this year.
But only State Question 836 has been subject to Daniels' new stipulations.
"And big surprise," Moore said sarcastically in a phone interview, "It was too tight to qualify."
A volunteer spokesperson for Vote Yes 836 said the group is considering its options for what's ahead, taking into account its legal footing and resources.
The same day it became public that SQ 836 had failed, lawmakers passed House Joint Resolution 1019 by Oklahoma City Republican Eric Roberts through committee with a struck title, making it available for floor discussion with amendments at a later date.
The proposal would codify Oklahoma's existing semi-closed, partisan primaries in the State Constitution if it passes the full legislature, is signed by the governor and approved by a majority of voters.
It's an unlikely feat, now that open primaries are no longer a threat.
