On Saturday afternoon of Memorial Day weekend – always a good time to sign incredibly unpopular legislation to roll back the rights and freedoms of the people and derail their ability to self-govern – Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt happily and quietly signed SB 1027 into law.
Known around here as the Oklahoma Citizen Petition Oppression Act, the controversial piece of legislation will make it even more difficult, if not impossible, for any group to gather enough signatures to put a petition initiative on the Oklahoma ballot and up for a statewide vote.
Basically, Governor Kevin Stitt – along with his ass-faced buddy Lonnie Paxton and incest-faced buddy David Bullard – has all but ensured that the citizen-led measures that brought us medical marijuana, Medicaid expansion, criminal justice reform, and anti-corruption transparency laws will never see the light of day again.
Let freedumb ring, huh?
Here are the details via KFOR:
Governor Kevin Stitt has signed a controversial bill into law that changes Oklahoma’s initiative petition process, in a move critics say will make it harder for everyday Oklahomans to get issues on the ballot.
The legislation places new caps on how many signatures can be gathered from each county during the initiative petition process, which allows Oklahomans to propose laws or constitutional amendments and put them to a statewide vote...
But Stitt signed it into law in the middle of Memorial Day Weekend at 8 p.m. on Saturday.
Ever since they first tried in 2020, I’ve been covering the various attempts by rural right-wing Derplahoman lawmakers to sabotage Oklahoma’s state question initiative process.
To be honest, I was never quite sure our lawmakers had enough moronic, short-sighted stupidity to actually go through with this plan.
But with Oklahoma United now trying to change the primary process that keeps these ultra right-wing kooks, lunatics, and authoritarian Christian nationalists in power—and with a potential state question about abortion slowly taking shape—I guess the time to limit their own rights in a desperate bid to thwart the will of the majority was now.
Unlike other bills he gleefully signs with a Sharpie and a smile, Kevin Stitt didn’t have much to say about this one—probably because he signed it on a rainy Saturday night during a holiday weekend. I guess you can't blame him. If I signed a bill that limited not only my own rights, but also those of people living in the counties where most Oklahomans actually reside, I’d probably stay quiet too!
If Stitt had said something, he probably would have just regurgitated the same fool’s logic lawmakers like to repeat when justifying their efforts to strip away long-held constitutional rights.
You know, the “We’Re PrOtEcTiNg RuRaL cOuNtIeS” hogwash they oink out on the House floor and in editorial pages.
For example:
“We are actually moving out to more counties, getting the signatures of a more diverse population of Oklahomans,” Sen. Bullard said during debate on the Senate floor in March.
“It is important for the entire state to be represented in the process,” said Rep. Jim Olsen (R-Roland).
Friendly reminder – the entire state was already equally represented in the citizen petition process.
You see, signature gathering isn’t the vote. It’s the permission slip to let the people decide.
Once a state question makes it onto the ballot, every registered voter in Oklahoma gets – or at least used to get – an equal say on the measure. It doesn’t matter if they live in the heart of OKC or out among the cow patties of the Panhandle, all votes count the same. If rural or city voters don’t like a proposal, they can vote against it—just like they did with SQ 777 (Right to Farm), SQ 779 (Education Sales Tax), and SQ 820 (Recreational Marijuana).
But mouthbreathers like Stitt and his merry band of theocrats don’t really care about that type of logic. They’re more concerned that a majority of Oklahomans might reject their extremist agenda and take their state back, so they’re rigging rules – and restricting rights – to keep that from happening.
Well, if the courts let them get away with it.
As we mentioned in our last article about this topic, Robert McCampbell, an Oklahoma City attorney who specializes in constitutional law, wrote that the bill was unconstitutional.
"The bill includes provisions that restrict petition circulators, prohibit out-of-state contributions, grant broad discretionary power to the secretary of state over citizen-initiated petitions, and retroactively change the procedure for initiative petitions. Each of these provisions conflicts with well-established legal precedent," McCampbell wrote in a four-page memo analyzing the measure.
The government, McCampbell said, is not free to "impose burdensome roadblocks to the citizen initiative process."
"The courts are unanimous that circulating a petition is 'core political speech' where First Amendment protection is at its 'zenith,'" he wrote. "The restrictions on core political speech embodied in SB 1027 cannot survive scrutiny under the First Amendment."
I know Oklahoma’s courts are becoming just as politicized and illogical as our legislature, but let’s hope they’re able to block this one. If not, the ability of the Oklahoma people to both self-govern and overcome the political cowardice and ineptitude of our representation will become a thing of the past.
Stay with The Lost Ogle. We’ll keep you advised.
