Last week I wrote how the Oklahoma Legislature failed, for the fourth year in a row, to pass Ballot Access Reform. That, unfortunately, is not the end of their Democracy hating actions. They also passed a bill that greatly decreases the amount of time that new parties have to gather the unnecessarily burdensome number of signatures.
Prior to the passage of HB 1615, the deadline for new party petitions was May. This bill changes that to March. A loss of 2 months to gather the 50,000+ signatures needed to have party approval for 2012.
What really gets my goat here, is the fact that Senator Sykes is the Senate Sponsor of this bill as well as a committee member of the Senate Rules Committee that killed HB 1058, the Ballot Access Reform bill. So in two moves Senator Sykes made it even more difficult for the people of Oklahoma to hold a “free and equal” election (Oklahoma Constitution, Section III-5) (more…)