Oklahoma politicians are in court trying to defend a new law they passed to gut their citizens’ rights to put initiatives on the ballot, which allows the people to take action on matters where the Legislature refuses to act.
But even if Oklahoma’s Supreme Court upholds the new law, Oklahomans seeking to propose some of the laws they live under will still be better off than Kansans.
The new Oklahoma law would still allow citizens to circulate petitions to put issues to a public vote. But it cripples the process by capping the number of voter signatures that can be counted from the state’s two large metropolitan areas, Oklahoma City and Tulsa.
The new law “establishes that no more than 10% of the total number of signatures required for an initiative or referendum petition be from legal electors of a county with a population of 400,000 or more and that no more than 4% be from legal electors of a county with population less than 400,000” according to the legislative summary.
Oklahoma has only two counties over 400,000 population, Oklahoma City’s Oklahoma County and Tulsa’s Tulsa County.
The politicians’ argument is that signature caps on voters in those two counties ensure that rural Oklahomans have more of a voice in what initiatives get on the ballot.
Let me translate that: Some Oklahoma voters deserve more political power than others, based on where they choose to live.
For example: Oklahoma has slightly more than 4 million people and 20% of them live in Oklahoma County. That means proportionally, a petition signature from OKC would carry about half the weight of a signature from a rural county. That’s not to mention the logistical difficulty of having to collect about 173,000 signatures in 90 days, while excluding tens of thousands of eligible voters in the places that have the most voters.
But as unfair as that may be, it’s still better than Kansas.
We don’t have any way to bring a law or constitutional amendment to the ballot. Only the state Legislature has that power.
So issues that a majority of Kansans would like the opportunity to vote on — like decriminalization of marijuana or expanded Medicaid to cover the working poor — go unaddressed year after year after year.
Whenever I cover something at the Kansas Capitol, I pass by a sign on the way to our office in the building saying “All political power is inherent in the people.” And every time I see it, I think “and their names are Ty Masterson and Dan Hawkins.”
The Senate president and House speaker control the agenda and see to it that any legislation that doesn’t suit their fancy never comes to a floor vote.
Rank-and-file Republican members who don’t walk in lockstep behind them are routinely punished by another power perk belonging to the Senate president and House speaker. Dissenting legislators get stripped of committee chairmanships and assignments, which really only punishes the voters who sent their lawmakers to Topeka to represent them, not Masterson and Hawkins.
Two weeks ago, Hawkins removed several lawmakers from committee chair and vice-chair positions because they declined to sign a petition for a special session to redraw congressional district boundaries. It’s part of Donald Trump’s scheme to maintain GOP control of the U.S. House by altering districts before the 2026 election — and the Kansas part of the national plot targets Rep. Sharice Davids.
Masterson did the same thing as Hawkins three years ago to senators who didn’t support his legislative maps then, which were also designed (but failed) to prevent Davids’ re-election in 2024.
