State Question 836 could have opened Oklahoma's Primary elections to all registered voters, regardless of their political party, but it fell about 31,000 signatures short of making it on the ballot.
Senate Bill 518, pushed by now-Republican leadership in 2024, may have stifled that chance.
Signatures submitted to the state in support of an initiative are cross-referenced with the latest state voter rolls for verification that each signature represents one qualified registered voter and only one.
Since 2020, when lawmakers hired the third-party company Western Petitions in a no-bid contract to carry out Oklahoma's signature verification process, the company has matched three of these five voter data points to validate a signature for the total count:
- legal first name
- Legal last name
- Zip code
- House number
- Numerical month and day of my birth
Senate Bill 518 mandated Western Petitions to validate four of the five voter data points, instead of three, effectively making it 20% harder for any given signature to be approved for the count and disqualifying nearly 58,000 signatures submitted in favor of State Question 836.
Andy Moore is with the non-partisan civic education group Let's Fix This. He says the question not getting a chance to appear before voters should "raise eyebrows."
"State Question 836 was the first major ballot initiative campaign since those changes," Moore said. "I think the public really wants to know if those changes were helpful or hurtful."
When Sen. Julie Daniels, R-Bartlesville, ran Senate Bill 518 on the floor the year before it was ultimately passed under Senate Pro Temp Lonnie Paxton, R-Tuttle, as the new author, lawmakers pressed Daniels on the need for the measure.
She said it was meant to increase security.
"I'm concerned about improving always the integrity of our initiative and referendum process," Daniels said. "We do a lot of bills covering the improvements on the integrity of our voter registration and election process, so this is a similar sort of bill, making sure we have a petition process that's reliable for the voter and those participating."
But Moore isn't convinced it worked. He says the legislation passed by Republicans in recent years has only complicated the process.
"And now we have it," Moore said. "They've made some final changes that were much more restrictive. And indeed, the very first question to go through didn't qualify."
Of the 241,000 signatures submitted, 209,616 were deemed eligible for processing. 57,841 signatures were disqualified for failing four of the five data-point checks.
The required threshold of verified signatures for State Question 836 to make the ballot was 172,993. The final total count reached 142,667.
Amy Canton is the Director of Executive Legislative Services at the Oklahoma Secretary of State's office. She said in an emailed response to questions from KOSU that there are several reasons why a signature might not qualify, as well as other clerical errors.
"If they do not match 4 of 5, then they only matched 3 or less of 5," Canton wrote. " So, 57,841 lines only verified 3 or fewer out of the 5 data point requirements."
Those reasons include missing page numbers on signature sheets, blank signature blocks, late and early signatures, incorrect or incomplete addresses, duplicate signatures, and more, according to the signature certification summary.
In the case of the initiative to open Oklahoma's primaries, 205 pages of signatures were shaved from the top of the count because of missing information in the circulator or notary attestation portion on the page. Essentially, the information verifying the legal process for collection was followed.
Canton wrote the issue has come up before.
"The 205 sheets were disqualified according to the requirements of Title 34, Sections 6 and 6.1. These sections of law have to do with the Circulator's and Notary Public's oath and attestation," Canton wrote. " SQ836 had the lowest number of disqualified sheets compared to SQ832 (781 disqualified out of 18,660) and SQ820 (1,181 disqualified sheets out of 23,043)."
What's less clear about the overall count is how many of the disqualified signatures would have met 3 of the five data points, and whether the question would have made it to the ballot last year based on that number.
But Canton wrote that number isn't available.
"We do not have that information; the verification software has been updated with the 4 out of 5 required by law," she wrote.
