By Barbara Hoberock, Oklahoma Voice
OKLAHOMA CITY – Oklahoma Supreme Court justices on Tuesday questioned attorneys about the burdens of a new law that puts more restrictions on the process used to get issues on the ballot.
“At some point, the burdens pile up and it becomes an undue burden,” said Justice Noma Gurich.
People will not try to get things on the ballot with all of the additional burdens placed on the process by the new law, said Randall Yates, an attorney representing those who filed the lawsuit.
Last session, lawmakers passed and Gov. Kevin Stitt signed Senate Bill 1027, forcing initiative petition signature collectors to visit several Oklahoma counties rather than concentrate on high-population areas.
Those seeking to place items on the ballot, under the new law, are prohibited from paying circulators based on the number of signatures collected. It requires sources of payment to circulators to be disclosed and bars out-of-state interests from donating.
Petition circulators would have to be registered voters.
It requires a political appointee, the Secretary of State, to approve the gist, which is a brief summary of the ballot measure that voters see at the top of the signature sheet.
Yates asked the Court to toss out the law in its entirety, rather than remove the offending sections.
The new law does not preserve the constitutional right of people to get issues on the ballot, but frustrates it at every opportunity, he said.
“It imposes county signature caps that deny the right to otherwise qualified Oklahoma voters,” Yates said. “It installs a government gatekeeper to control core political advocacy. It layers on restrictions in circulation, funding and reporting to make the process so burdensome that it would be unrecognizable to the founding generation.”
Gurich said she had a concern about letting the governor control the content of the gist.
Even before the law passed, Oklahoma had one of the most demanding processes in the nation, with higher signature requirements and the shortest circulation period of 90 days, Yates said.
In the past 25 years, only five laws out of 11 state questions brought by the process have been created, he said.
“Senate Bill 1027’s new provisions will only drive those numbers down.” Yates said.
Zach West, director of special litigation for the Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office, said it is nearly undisputed that signature collectors spend little time outside the major metropolitan areas.
“It was eminently reasonable for the legislature to consider this discarding of suburban and rural Oklahoma as a major issue worth addressing with Senate Bill 1027,” West said.
The Oklahoma Constitution requires the legislature enact suitable regulations on the process, West said. He said the new regulations were reasonable.
