On April 11, filing for the Oklahoma primaries closed. That was also the deadline for independent candidates to file, even though independent candidates don’t run in the primary and go straight to the November ballot. Here is a link to the candidate list.

For the first time since 1998, a minor party candidate for Governor will appear on the November ballot. He is Richard Prawdzienski, an activist in the Libertarian Party. He is the first member of the Libertarian Party to run for Governor of Oklahoma. However, his ballot label will be “independent”, because the Libertarian Party is not on the ballot and has not been since 2000. 2014 will be the seventh election in a row in which no minor parties have appeared on the Oklahoma ballot. There is no other state that has gone seven elections in a row with no minor parties on the ballot for any office, since that was also true for Tennessee in the years 1974-1998.

In the five U.S. House races, there are two in which only Republicans filed. There are five statewide partisan offices in which only Republicans filed: Auditor, Attorney General, Treasurer, Insurance Commissioner, and Corporation Commissioner. Oklahoma does not permit write-in votes, so these offices will simply not be printed on the November 2014 ballot, since it would be impossible for anyone to vote against the Republican nominee in any event. Oklahoma disguises this lack of competition by simply removing one-candidate elections from the ballot.