Posts Tagged: ‘Senator Sykes’

Oklahoma Legislature Hates Democracy: The Sequel

May 2, 2011 Posted by zachary

Great Seal of The State of Oklahoma - 1907Last 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…)

Oklahoma Legislature Hates Democracy

April 28, 2011 Posted by zachary

Great Seal of The State of Oklahoma - 1907“All elections shall be free and equal.” – Oklahoma Constitution, Section III-5

Those words are found in our state’s constitution. Yet, our state legislature is not living up to that standard.

In 1974, the Legislative branch of Oklahoma decided they did not want competition in the Gubernatorial or Presidential elections from any person that was not a Republican or Democrat. They decided that they did not want any other parties rising up in Oklahoma to throw them out.

So they did what any fearful legislative body would do. They changed the laws to suit their own ends. They did this in two ways: First they wrote themselves into law. Second they put up extreme barriers for any other party. (more…)