Thus, at its core, the effort should be seen for what I believe it really is: a bid to rob the people of Oklahoma of their ability to vote by pushing candidate filing into December, when the public is distracted by the holidays, helping incumbents avoid challengers, win by default, and then govern unchecked in service of monied special interests.
I recently described the 5 o’clock smirk that will spread across the face of so many co-opted incumbent state representatives on the afternoon of April 3rd, as those representatives hit refresh on the State Election Board candidate-registration portal, for the 100th time over the course of the previous three days, and realize that they — they have gotten away with it.
For the previous two years, they have regularly betrayed the conservative values they campaigned on — their contract with the voter — in service of their financiers, the institutional, monied special interests who have filled their campaign war chests, to intimidate and deter any brave challenger who might seek to expose those many violations of conservative values and principles.
Now, for the remainder of the legislative session, that smirking incumbent will be able to betray those values even more, unchecked by the concerns of facing an impending election and, in some cases, having earned lame-duck status, and now free to indulge in their foremost corpulence of choice: living the Oklahoma City high life with little to no future constraints or consequences.
Perhaps no one is more anticipating his 5 o’clock smirk than the Speaker of the House, Kyle Hilbert himself, who, due to his problematic votes and decisions on a range of issues — and the fact that he represents a dynamic, conservative constituency capable of figuring out the truth — could easily face a credible and significant challenge of his own, a potential challenge that has likely kept him in check.
So one has to appreciate the temerity of Hilbert’s House Bill 2425, a proposal that Hilbert recently passed in the House Rules Committee — the committee made up of the most sycophantic of the sycophants, guaranteed to pass any proposal authorized by the Speaker. The committee dutifully passed Hilbert’s 2425 within the span of just a couple of minutes — a major rework of the state’s election system, with little deliberation, or even an attempt at pretended deliberation, deserving of a significant policy proposal such as this.
If ultimately approved by the Legislature, instead of having to file in April for a June primary election, candidates would instead file in December for a March primary election.
One can only imagine the advantage this would give those incumbents, having likely not drawn a challenger due to the fact that December falls before the session — and before the people of Oklahoma have a chance to know how their representative will be voting on the issues — and then giving them a free hand to do whatever they want, knowing that the electorate will not be able to judge their conduct for at least another two years.
Just as Oklahomans dodged the bullet that was the jungle primary proposal, Hilbert is set to shoot a new hole in the integrity of the primary voting system — a system that, in the last election cycle, terrified the Oklahoma City Capitol crowd by defeating both the Senate’s pro tem-to-be and the House appropriations chair.
Hilbert, in advocating for the proposal, points to Texas, which sports a March primary. And he’s right about that. But what Hilbert didn’t point out is the fact that Texas, in a system far superior to the one in Oklahoma, only empowers its legislators with a biennial legislative session. Texas legislators do not convene in the election year. Oklahoma’s, on the other hand — not content to legislate on the people on a biennial basis — terrorizes the populace on a yearly basis with new laws, fee hikes, bureaucracy creations, mega-giveaways to the corporate class, and much more.
Likewise, in neighboring Arkansas, which also holds March primary elections, their legislators do not have a policy session in the election year. Thus, there is no free hand granted to the Texas and Arkansas legislatures to enact policy knowing that there will be no referendum on their conduct for years to come — at which time the various value betrayals will be a distant memory in the minds of the people.
Hilbert’s only other stated logic for justifying this change. The pretext for overhauling the state’s primary election system? According to Hilbert, it’s to align the state’s primary with the state’s presidential preference primary, a unique election that occurs every four years.
But, should this be judged a credible goal, Hilbert could have just as easily suggested moving the once-every-four-years presidential preference primary to June, giving Oklahoma the unique opportunity to be the potentially deciding factor in that contest as one of the last states to weigh in — a rare but not impossible potentiality — as opposed to moving the once-every-two-years state primary up to March, thus giving legislators a free hand to terrorize the populace with no immediate repercussions for their bad actions.
Thus, at its core, the effort should be seen for what I believe it really is: a bid to rob the people of Oklahoma of their ability to vote by pushing candidate filing into December, when the public is distracted by the holidays, helping incumbents avoid challengers, win by default, and then govern unchecked in service of monied special interests.
It is just one of the many bad bills where legislators, due to the fact that they have an unnecessary, superfluous legislative session in which to work, can’t help themselves, attempting to fix what isn’t broken.
Fortunately, as the people attempt to expose and stop proposals such as these, they have a new tool at their disposal: oklahoma.statelens.org.
This tool, designed to allow the people to research, track, categorize, and generally get the word out about key legislation, illustrates how the best transparencies in government will come not from the public sector, but the private.
The service uses updated technologies to quickly return information in a way that the Legislature’s clunky public-facing tools — still depending on 25-year-old technologies — simply can’t match.
In this case, those wanting to track election bills simply need to tap the “All Bills” menu item and enter the term “elections” into the search bar. A fetch request immediately provides the user with all election bills, where he can scroll down to view the status of Hilbert’s initiative.
It is the new must-have tool in the arsenal of those who are endeavoring to engage in public policy and to know — and expose — the efforts of politicians such as Hilbert and initiatives such as HB 2425 that empower the political class at the expense of the common man.
And one more note for those who are seeking to have their voice heard: every Republican member of the House Rules Committee in attendance at that vote — the committee known for being the sycophants of the sycophants — passed this bill out of committee without so much as asking a single question, leaving the only two or three questions to come from the Democrat members.
Normally, they can get away with this because they are often viewed as untouchable — either lame ducks, such as the chairman of the committee, Mike Osburn of Edmond, and thus unaccountable to the voters — or safely ensconced in their districts to the point that they can cast any vote and not face consequences.
However, one of those Republicans, John Pfeiffer, will be on your primary ballot this June because he is seeking statewide office. Pfeiffer, long one of the top “green-voting” lemmings, who in 2025, out of 1,023 votes, appears to have found his “NO!” button all of 10 times. So embedded in Pfeiffer’s DNA is the desire to vote “Yes!” that he appears either unable to find that red “No!” button, or so arrogant as to believe he can win statewide office and the people will never find out about — or hold him accountable for — his many, many values-betraying votes, even though verdict day is now less than three months away.
Is he right?
Will he get away with it?
You get to render your decision on June 16th, as you do on many current and ex-legislators who are running for statewide office, pandering for your vote, but believe they can defy gravity and keep engaging in the big grift.
If you have found this information informative and helpful as you seek to hold your state government accountable, then take a moment to share it with your personal contacts. And, if you have yet to subscribe to this publication and want to become one of the most informed of the informed on matters such as these, take a moment to subscribe.
And remember, if you want to prevent your incumbent’s 5 o’clock smirk, go ahead and grab your filing packet from the State Election Board, then hit reply to this email, and let’s talk about the great service that you will provide to the people of Oklahoma by holding the system accountable.
House Speaker Kyle Hilbert Launches New Attack on Oklahoma's Primary Election System
Click the title to read the full report at Jason Murphey Blog
March 23, 2026 at 09:05AM - J Murphey
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