On October 7, the Oklahoma Libertarian Party held a state convention and voted that in 2018, only registered Libertarians will be able to vote in the Libertarian primary. It is likely that three individuals will seek the party’s gubernatorial nomination in 2018, and the majority of the convention delegates are eager that the voters in the Libertarian primary be well-informed about their choices.

Generally, newspapers don’t do a very good job of covering contested minor party primaries. Most of the delegates believed that the candidates for the gubernatorial nomination would be able to communicate meaningfully with the registered Libertarians during the primary season, because there are only about 5,000 of them. But it would be prohibitively expensive to communicate with the 300,000 independents. The primary will be June 26, 2018.

Also, in case any Libertarian candidate wishes to sue to overturn the new law on petitions in lieu of the filing fee, having a closed primary will make it easier to win that case. This year, the legislature changed the petition in lieu of filing law, so that the number of signatures is based on all the registered voters, instead of the number of eligible primary voters.