On March 23, the Oklahoma House Elections & Ethics Committee unanimously passed SB 896. It changes the vote test for a party to remain on the ballot from 10% of the vote for the office at the top of the ticket, to 2.5%. The bill was amended to take effect on November 1, 2016, instead of January 1, 2017, so assuming it passes the House soon, it will need to go back to the Senate.
The committee also passed SB 1016, to remove the names of any political parties from the voter registration form, and SB 1108, to remove the names of presidential elector candidates from the November ballot. The purpose of SB 1016 is to eliminate the need to reprint all the forms every time a new party qualifies, or every time one ceases to be qualified. Thanks to E. Zachary Knight for this news.
Has Oklahoma actually been listing all parties on its forms? That at least would be fairer than listing only some and imposing some extra effort on folks who want to sign up with the other parties.
For example/comparison . . . Michigan doesn’t have voter registration by party, but it does have forms for poll-workers (“election inspectors”) and they generally only have the R&D party names, with recently a slot added for us oddballs who want to register as with another party or none at all. Having just the slot would be easier as well as fairer.
John, Oklahoma’s voter registration forms are currently legally required to list all recognized political parties. For the last 16 years, that has only been Republican and Democratic. However, there are two other lines, one is “No Party” which is reflected as Independent, the other is “Other” with a blank line. This is so that people who wish to register as a member of a Political Organization, which is the legal category for a recognized party that failed to meet the retention requirement. That “other” column can also be used to register under a newly qualified party on old forms.
Under the law above, the only thing listed would be a blank line for the voter to write in the name of the party they wish to register under. This would mean that the voter registration forms would not have to be reprinted every time a party is recognized or loses recognition.
As of now, Voter registration forms now list Republican, Democratic, and Libertarian, as well as No Party and Other.