(13-minute read)
6th December 2024
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And there are currently 26 states. There has some form of an open primary voting system, and 24 states have their very closed system, which means only Republicans and vote in Republican primaries.
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And the same goes for Democrats. Now Oklahoma has a closed system, but the proposed state question 835 would amend the Oklahoma Constitution to change that. The idea has its advocates and opponents. As we learn this week's in-depth conversation with moderator Cassidy Mudd, rich Oklahomans might have the chance to vote on whether or not to open the state's primary system.
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Supporters of state question 835 argued that open primaries could address Oklahoma's widely criticized low voter turnout. While opponents claim the measure aims to undermine party structures. Here to discuss the potential outcomes is AJ Ferrante, the former chairman of the Oklahoma GOP party. We're also joined by longtime Republican pollster and campaign consultant Pac McFerron. Gentlemen, thank you both for joining me here on.
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Good to be here. Thank you, A.J. For those who may not be familiar. Can you kind of explain to us the state's current primary system? Yeah, sure. So Oklahoma has what is really more of a traditional system has been nationally in the traditional system. It it starts out with the concept and this goes back decades. And from the concept that the parties themselves, the political parties, choose whom their nominee should be to go to the general elections.
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So the Republican Party has the opportunity to choose the nominee that it wants to be on that general ballot. Similar with the Democrats and any other parties, libertarians currently are the other party in Oklahoma that's recognized. And so each of those parties has the opportunity to bring forward who they say this is the candidate that represents our ticket.
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This is the ideas that we want represented. And then the general election voters have the opportunity. Independent. Republican. Democrat. Libertarian. Everyone has the opportunity on the general election to actually vote. Now, if you want an actual say, under the current system in who that party may nominate, you have the opportunity to actually register for that political party and actually become a member of that party vote for that party and, assist in in the decision making of that political party.
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And who is sent to the general election ballot. Pat, what is question 835 trying to accomplish? Well, a couple of state question 835 I think wants to to take this away from the political parties and give it to the people. It is really to build on what he's talking there, talking about there. And so that should be the people deciding who the nominees are and who's going to move forward, not the political parties themselves.
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So what state question 835 does is it basically does away with three separate Republican and Democrat primaries and creates one open, unified ballot where all the Republicans and all the Democrats, all the libertarians, independents will all be on the same ballot. Everybody vote for one candidate and then the top two will face off in November. So it allows everyone to participate.
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Every taxpayer that's registered to vote, to participate instead of the exclusionary process we have right now. So what are the two? I mean, what is the biggest difference between how our state's two some actions now and how we would like to see it function then? Well, for an advocate like myself, I mean, it's it's where every voter has an equal vote.
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Right now, that's not the case in Oklahoma. 86% of our legislative elections were decided before November. We had over, roughly 240 county offices, and there was only one that was competitive in the entire state of Oklahoma in November. These are all decided in the primaries right now. So independents, Democrats, or if you're in an area that's a Democrat area, Republicans could be excluded from participating.
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Hey, why would you say people are disagreeing with this initiative petition? Well, let me only talk about a couple of things. Let me go back. Even ten years ago. It wasn't very long ago that this became a Republican state, roughly about 2004. I know in presidential elections we can go back to 1964 and say that it's been a Republican state, but people have continuously been registered as Democrats in this state.
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Significantly, even past 2004. But but, we can use that as a, as a point for discussion. And I can tell you ten years ago, running into people in the rural areas of the state that would say I'm still a registered Democrat because I want to vote in primaries.
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And that's what I was always taught, is that I'm supposed to vote registered Democrat so I can vote for the county commissioner, so I can vote for all of the local officials, the sheriff. So this isn't some sort of new phenomenon. This is only a new phenomenon. Only because the Republicans have begun to take charge, really, over the last 20 years.
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And, some of the more traditional Democrats and, left leaning independents are really trying to seek a voice when it's very simple and they can just join the Republican Party. You know, if I could follow up on that. I mean, I was a Republican in Oklahoma when it was Democrat dominated. And it was wrong then to be forced to join the party just to vote.
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Which is why what you're advocating for, you should be forced to join a Republican Party to vote. Or, you know, I live down in central Norman. Should I be forced to join the Democrat Party to vote for state legislator there? Because it's always going to be a Democrat? I don't think so. I mean, we fought for years to get right to work.
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So you shouldn't be forced to join a union to have a job. You shouldn't be forced to join a party to vote either. So without this, you know, if we do have an open primary, it would allow, you know, someone who may be a Republican or someone who is a Democrat or an independent got to talk about those independents as well.
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It would allow them to vote for a Republican, for a Democrat, whether or not that primary. Just like it's just like just like a general election right now, you don't have to vote the party you're registered. So if you have everybody on one ballot, you can go vote for the person you like the most. Now, on the proposal that we put forward.
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have their party labels on it, so it'd have AJ parody Republican. It would have Pat McFerran Republican. It would have, everybody else's names down there. And then you'd vote for one person. I actually think it's something like a support the party structure, because then a party endorsement would matter. Right now, a party endorsement, the state doesn't really matter.
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The Republicans are going to win almost statewide. They're going to win most everything. So the party endorse it doesn't matter if the party's going to stay out of primaries. This would allow the parties and activists to say, hey, this is the type of Republican we want. This is the type of Democrat we want and actually have more influence.
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Let me touch on something that Pat said a second ago and let me talk about 2008. Governor has been governor since 2018. He was elected at that point. If we go with the system that, that 835 is proposing, Governor Stitt wouldn't have been on the ballot. He would have actually had two Democrats on the ballot. And one of the examples that that the problem is in the Republican Party, we have a very active party.
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We have a number of candidates. If you put a number of candidates on the ballot, it actually hurt your chances in that primary of actually getting a Republican onto the ticket. So I don't think that, you know, we look at the history, we look at the more recent, policy views of the state of Oklahoma. I don't think that two Democrats on the general election ballot, 2018 would have been representative of the state.
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But more importantly, we're already talking about eight potential candidates for lieutenant governor in the Republican race in two years. How are we going to get a a Republican on the general election ballot if we have that much decision making going on on the Republican side? Adrian, a post on X, you criticized support for the initiative petition, saying that all parties would be harmed by state question.
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They would. Okay, so. Well, we could just look at California or frankly, my home state of Washington state in the eastern half of the state. You don't get Republicans on that top two ballot. Similarly, on the western half of the state, you only have those two Democrat choices on that ballot. The example that I'm pointing to in 2018 here in Oklahoma, that would have occurred, is what's happening regularly in California and Oregon and Washington state.
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These are the sort of states that that this is the these are the sort of decisions that are being made out there on the state where, frankly, I think it actually distorts Republican or Democrat votes here in Oklahoma. Democrats will not be on the ballot in many of the places that they might usually be. You might get them in Nichols Hills.
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You might get them in some areas of Tulsa on the ballot. You might get them on statewide elections where you have a number of candidates that are coming up. But it really distorts the opportunity for people of all political philosophies to actually have an option and a voice on the ballot. Is there something you'd like to add to that?
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Yeah. I mean, even one thing, the 2018 example, that's like saying if we'd kicked another field goal, we'd run the won the baseball game. It's a totally different game. There were I mean, as you mentioned before, hasn't met long ago. There are a lot of Democrats who would like to vote for Republican, but they were prohibited from voting for one of the Republican candidates last time.
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So I think that comparison is just not not not apropos for what this is. And it's really not what's happened. And you can find very few examples where the party of the most dominant group in an area doesn't have at least one person to vote for in those November elections. When you look at, at your Washington, California to Louisiana, it just doesn't happen.
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Every election structure has has oddities. I have no doubt in a minute you're going to say we're trying to California, Oklahoma by doing this. We have the we have the same super Santa form. We have the same system as New York. We're not like New York because this is an Oklahoma solution. This is how every city and municipality in our state elects their mayor.
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That that has an election for mayor. And, where you have the top to move forward. And what it does is it gets every elected official having to stand in front of every voter. But you don't have to do right now. Our system right now, for example, if you don't have a difference, though, let them run off the ballots.
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Let him finish off. If you look at that, like Carter County, where we just had a sheriff's election, we had two Republicans file for that office. They had an exact tie. Instead of letting Democrats and independents have a voice, they drew a name out of a hat. And that's how we're governing. So much of the state right now is with that small sector of the electorate, and not even let others participate.
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And it's just like, Sheriff, there was not a single competitive general election for sheriff anywhere in the state. You know, there's there's a much easier solution to the Carter County race than I was there, actually, when they drew the name out of the hat, I represented one of the one of
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in that race. But the simple fact is, why don't we just fix the hat pulling? Why don't we fix that? We don't need to do this Grand, readjustment of how we imagine our elections in Oklahoma. Our elections have been great. We have one of the best election systems in the country. And now we're all of a sudden need to do this grand remake.
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Reimagine. Simply because there's some out there that want to vote in the Republican Party when there's already a solution to do that. You know, we're 15th in the nation to, two presidential elections a row in a row. We're last in the nation and voter turnout, because our November elections don't matter and people are disenfranchised. And you get someone like me that I feel I'm disenfranchised right now.
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I live in an area where the Democrat is going to win my state legislative seat. It's just a fact. And my sheriff, there's always going to be a Republican. So I have to choose where am I going to disenfranchize myself and my race for state legislator, or my race for sheriff? And we should have put Oklahomans and voters in that position, especially those that are paying taxes, that pay for these primaries.
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If these are the Republican and Democrat primaries, the Republican and Democrat parties should be paying for them, not the taxpayers, not the 420,000 450,000 independents who are paying taxes and are excluded. I want to be I just to be clear on that. I don't have any issue with the political parties paying for their primaries, their caucuses, whatever, but that's not going to be an option under 835.
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So it's just not something that is really secondary to this. All right. Well ideally you would allow caucuses under 835. Yeah. I mean, you wouldn't it wouldn't affect to the ballot. But you could have the caucus and do whatever you wanted to your convention. Let's put a pin in this right now. I wanted to talk about the other states, kind of because you mentioned other states.
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You mentioned California, but you've seen other states do different things. So there are currently, I believe, 26 other states that have some kind of form of an open primary. I would tell you there were 26 states that have something more open than what Oklahoma has. But this is taking a further step. And in fact, I would tell you from from a gamesmanship, political gamesmanship, I think the group in the middle is the is the least desirable.
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It's not like Texas or Missouri or these other places where you can have people raid one party or the other. This would take that away. Are you referring to independents as people in the middle, talking about who you would have a race where you decide on election Day which primary ballot you want? So this is only one primary ballot.
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You don't have that that issue with Democrats flooding or Republican or Republican flooding. The Democrats to pick the least, capable nominee. If this is enacted, do you think that this legislation would impact the 2028 election cycle? I believe if I remember correctly, the way that it's written, it does not affect 26, but I believe that it does affect 28.
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Yes. Okay. And how do you think it would affect it? I don't know who the candidates are going to be. I mean, clearly in a Republican presidential candidate campaign, you're going to have probably by the time it gets Oklahoma, 4 or 5 names on that ballot. Just to be clear, this is not a well, let him sit and let him fit.
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Like, okay, here's just in fact presidential. Thank you. But it does. It's going to affect congressional races. It's going to affect I guess it would be for 30 race who it affect for governor. It would affect some of these races further down the line that, you know, or they're going to see an impact. Like I said, we've already discussed some of the issues we're seeing in many of the districts in California, in Washington state, where you get to Republicans or two Democrats is your options, and you got to hold your nose or you stay home.
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Frankly, I think that that encourages staying home in more instances than not. I want to be really brief here. We're just about out of time voter engagement. Well, I think that's one of the things you talked about people at home. The data doesn't back that up. The data shows that more people turn out to vote in these general elections.
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When you have candidates that care about everybody and that there's their own party primary group. And when they stand before those and we can't get worse than we are or last or last and civic engagement, now we're last in voter turnout. I think what we're doing is not sustainable. We have to do something to further engage. And as a conservative, I would say, I think our Republican parties have gotten too lazy, and that we only appeal and work toward this, this small group and sort of putting our ideas out in the open, because I do think they are the best ideas.
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And really quickly here. What are the next steps? We filed it, with the state secretary's office. There's a, another 85 days or so for someone to file a challenge, and then then we're up to the discretion of the court for when they hear that challenge and move forward. As our proponent side, our goal is to be on the November 26th ballot.
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But there's a lot of hurdles to get through that. And this question is for both of you. But ultimately, do you think adopting an open primary system will hurt or help Oklahoma's political landscape? We'll start with you. I think it definitely harms the way that we believe here in Oklahoma. I think it harms, Nobody I think it's actually great.
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I think it'll be something that will, reinvigorate our state party structure, which is diminished since Citizens United. I think it will, have our elected officials have to stand in front of more voters, be more responsive, and give voters more choices. I feel like we've only really scratched the surface here, but I want to thank you both so very much for coming in and giving us your insights.
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Yeah. Thank you for having us. Thank you folks.
