University of Oklahoma political scientist Ronald Keith Gaddie says in this article that Oklahoma’s legislature should have gone further this year with a ballot access improvement. The legislature lowered the petition for newly-qualifying parties from 5% of the last vote cast to 3% of the last gubernatorial vote. Ironically, Oklahoma still has the nation’s most restrictive ballot access for presidential candidates running outside the major parties. No other state is higher than 2% of the last vote cast.
Gaddie is a former chair of the Political Science Department at the University of Oklahoma, and is an expert on election law. Thanks to E. Zachary Knight for the link.
I think they match Alabama with the 3% now.
Only when there is a filing fee of no more than 2% of the annual office salary for statewide, and 5% for local office salary will there be a fair filing system.
Alabama,
Oklahoma has a filing fee if you want to run as an independent for all offices except president. We are trying to change that.
But we are also trying to change the party formation laws. The 3% change was a step in the right direction, but it isn’t nearly enough.
You can read a brief on what we want changed here: http://okvoterchoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/BallotAccessBrief.pdf
On March 1, 2012, the LPO turned in over 57,000 petition signatures for ballot access in Oklahoma. 41,070 were determined to be valid Oklahoma registered voters–not enough under the old law. We should need about 34,000 raw signatures for 2016.