April 27 is the deadline for Oklahoma bills that have passed the house of origin to also have passed the other house. Neither of the two bills that improve ballot access will be brought up in the House on April 27. Both bills had passed the Senate and all House committees with almost no opposition, but they can’t pass in 2017. Oklahoma has two-year legislative sessions, so both bills will be alive during 2018.
SB 145 eliminates mandatory petitions for independent presidential candidates and the presidential nominees of unqualified parties. SB 350 makes it easier for a party to remain on the ballot.
Oklahoma legislators may want to see the official voter registration statistics in January 2018 before acting to slide the ballot access quotas for 2018.
Actually, the Oklahoma State Election Board keeps a running tally of party registration. Although they only publish it a few times in even years, anyone can ask the Board for the day’s current totals for all parties, at any time.
Neither of these bills have anything to do voter registration numbers.
Since other states have adopted party registration as a criteria, where they provide for it, for ballot access it remains open for the Oklahoma legislature to add it to the pending bills.
The one thing I bet against in 2018 is Oklahoma legalizing write-in votes on ballots so long as they have the backing of the courts’ vacuous reasonings. Write-in votes are alleged to require expensive and subjective hand counting. Yet other states manage to do it.