Oklahoma
State Contractor Verifying Petitions for Recreational Marijuana Initiative – Oklahoma Watch
Oklahoma is paying an organization related to a political polling agency $300,000 per yr to confirm signatures for statewide poll initiatives, main some to query the equity of the method by which Oklahomans can vote immediately on state points.
Western Petition Techniques LLC is now accountable for verifying signatures for State Query 820, which might legalize leisure marijuana for grownup customers 21 and older. The corporate was based by Invoice Shapard, whose Shapard Analysis LLC runs Sooner Ballot.
Organizers for an adult-use hashish state query, Sure on 820, turned in 118 containers of signatures on July 5 to the secretary of state’s workplace. That represented greater than 164,000 signatures, many greater than the 94,911 wanted for a statewide initiative election.
Michelle Tilley, marketing campaign director for Sure on 820, stated the group has had observers watching the verification at Shapard’s workplaces in Oklahoma Metropolis.
“Our crew is watching the depend identical to we’d if state staff had been doing the depend as an alternative of a vendor,” Tilley stated. “And identical to in that case, there might be an opportunity for us to lift any points after the depend is finished. Within the meantime, we thank everybody concerned within the essential work of creating certain the voices of on a regular basis Oklahomans are heard by the initiative course of.”
The group is the primary to undergo the brand new signature verification course of. Lawmakers in 2020 gave the secretary of state’s workplace the authority to modernize the method by which the signatures of registered voters who signed petitions are verified. Beforehand, the workplace employed and skilled non permanent staff to confirm them manually with voter registration information. Home Invoice 3826 was one of many few items of coverage laws accredited in a session shortened by the outset of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.
The invoice allowed the secretary of state to buy software program to confirm signatures with a number of knowledge factors within the state’s voter registration file. Few lawmakers on the time thought that might enable an out of doors vendor to be concerned within the course of. The software program buy was exempt from the state’s bidding necessities underneath the Central Buying Act.
Rep. Andy Fugate, D-Del Metropolis, stated he was shocked to see the verification course of undergo a vendor. Debate on the Home ground centered on the know-how wants of the secretary of state’s workplace and a want to modernize and velocity up the counting course of. He referred to as it “completely outrageous” that an important authorities perform has been outsourced.
“I don’t recall something within the laws we checked out that might have allowed this to be outsourced to a 3rd get together,” Fugate stated. “The intent from my perspective was to permit the secretary of state’s workplace to do that in a greater trend themselves, to not ship this out to some good outdated boy. What are we going to do subsequent, have them tabulate all our election outcomes?”
Secretary of State Brian Bingman, a former GOP chief within the Senate, accredited the state’s contract with Western Petition Techniques in January 2021. Among the many necessities, it requires the corporate to create and supply petition paperwork that may be scanned and to arrange coaching to petition-gathering organizations. The corporate should even have a warehouse or workplace facility in Oklahoma Metropolis to securely home returned petitions.
Shapard referred inquiries to the secretary of state’s workplace. Jeffrey Cartmell, an lawyer and counselor to the secretary of state, stated the seller is offering the software program however the secretary of state’s workplace nonetheless hires the folks doing the verification. Western Petition Techniques was picked over an organization from Arizona, with the choice primarily based on price and safety.
The contract, which was obtained underneath the Open Data Act, was not too long ago renewed for fiscal yr 2023, which began July 1. The flat annual charge of $300,000 applies irrespective of what number of initiative petitions are filed for verification every year.
“The price contains all of the assets required (apart from staffing) and a safe system that isn’t linked to the web to hold out and full a statewide petition verification undertaking,” Cartmell stated in a written assertion.
Amber England, who ran the profitable initiative petition for Medicaid enlargement that voters accredited in June 2020, stated the initiative petition has at all times been fraught with politics. That’s as a result of the governor appoints the secretary of state and has the ultimate say on when a state query will seem on the poll. However outsourcing signature verification to a vendor that additionally has a polling operation injects one other layer of partisan politics, she stated.
“I feel that it was extremely essential for the framers of the Oklahoma Structure to make sure that voters had the facility to take one thing on to the poll and round these folks in energy,” stated England, who owns Technique 77, a public affairs and political consulting firm. “This course of simply injects extra limitations and extra politics right into a course of that’s already extraordinarily tough.”
Nothing within the secretary of state’s contract with Western Petition Techniques would preclude Shapard’s polling operation from asking questions associated to state questions that could be up for signature verification, Cartmell stated. However it could possibly be amended in a later contract if that turned a problem.
England stated the initiative petition course of has a number of alternatives for opponents to problem or stall the efforts. However it has no statutory deadlines for the secretary of state to depend signatures.
As of Sunday, the trouble to confirm signatures for SQ 820 has taken 33 days. That’s greater than the time wanted to confirm signatures for all however one of many final seven citizen-led state questions that made it onto the poll since 2016. On common, it took about three weeks to confirm signatures for these different state questions. The Legislature may also go resolutions for points to return earlier than voters in a statewide referendum.
Some GOP lawmakers, upset with profitable initiative petitions to develop Medicaid, approve medical marijuana and reclassify some drug-related felonies to misdemeanors, proposed adjustments to the initiative petition course of. Amongst them had been proposals to require a majority in two-thirds of counties to approve state questions for them to take impact and prison background checks for petition circulators. Not one of the proposed adjustments had been profitable within the legislative session this yr.
Final month, Legal professional Normal John O’Connor’s workplace rewrote the wording of SQ 820, saying it initially didn’t embrace a fiscal affect assertion and noting a dozen different deficiencies. The lawyer common’s workplace filed the brand new language on July 26. If it survives any challenges, that would be the wording that seems on the poll if sufficient signatures are verified.
“We had been pleasantly shocked the lawyer common revised the poll title so shortly,” stated Tilley with the Sure on 820 marketing campaign. “We had been happy the method labored the way in which it ought to in that occasion. Now we have no plans to contest it.”
Paul Monies has been a reporter with Oklahoma Watch since 2017 and covers state companies and public well being. Contact him at (571) 319-3289 or pmonies@oklahomawatch.org. Observe him on Twitter @pmonies.
Reporter Keaton Ross contributed to this report.
Shut window Most of Oklahoma Watch’s content material is on the market for republication by different information media in print and digital type. Please observe these phrases for republication:
* Reporters’ bylines and photographers’ credit score traces must be accompanied by “Oklahoma Watch.”
* Embrace the Oklahoma Watch emblem (discovered right here).
* Use the next credit score line on the finish of the story, with oklahomawatch.org hyperlinked on-line:
“Oklahoma Watch, at oklahomawatch.org, is a nonprofit, nonpartisan information group that covers public-policy points going through the state.” 1 Republish this text