Rep. Eric Roberts, R-Oklahoma City, has filed legislation to prohibit the use of ranked-choice voting in all Oklahoma elections, emphasizing the importance of safeguarding the state’s electoral processes. This is good news, but Griffin Communications’ Tulsa KOTV Channel 6 Sunday promoted an “Open Primary System” just as today the State of New Hampshire utilizes that chaotic process to harm Republicans and their presumptive nominee Donald J. Trump.
House Bill 3156 would ban ranked-choice voting within the state. House Joint Resolution 1048 would introduce a legislative referendum allowing voters to decide whether to add stipulations about how elections are conducted into the Oklahoma Constitution and ensure voters can select only one candidate for the same office.
“Ranked-choice voting makes voting more confusing and has delayed election results everywhere it has been tried,” Roberts said in a release Monday. “We need to preserve the simplicity and timeliness of our current elections, along with our current ease in doing hand recounts when needed.”
Ranked-choice voting requires voters to designate their top choice in a race, their second choice and so on down the ballot. Roberts gave the example of a ballot with five offices. If each office has four candidates, he said, each voter would be expected to review and rank four candidates for each race, which is a total of 20 votes. If no candidate receives a majority, the least popular candidate is then eliminated and their voters would have their votes reallocated to their second-choice candidate, with the process repeating until one candidate has a majority.
The process requires specialized computer software to handle the reallocation of votes from one candidate to another. In an interim study last year, Oklahoma State Election Board Secretary Paul Ziriax said the adoption of ranked-choice voting would necessitate the replacement of all state election machines, including new computer software, with an estimated cost of “tens of millions of dollars.”
Ziriax told committee members that “the days of knowing the election results on election night would be long gone.” Ranked-choice voting has already been banned in Florida, Tennessee, Idaho, Montana and South Dakota. HB3156 and HJR1048 are to be considered in the Second Regular Session of the 59th Oklahoma Legislature, which begins Monday, Feb. 5.
KOTV Sunday aired a story with two so-called election experts, Jeremy Gruber with Open Primaries and Margaret Kobos with Oklahoma United, discussing the push for open primary elections and what that would mean for voters. Both groups want open primaries. It is a media shame KOTV did not offer alternative views or debate in this newscast.
While Independent Voters can vote in Oklahoma Democratic Party Primaries, Republicans must be registered as a Republican to vote in the party primary for good reason.
This election cycle draws a stark difference nationwide and locally between Lawful Freedom and Constitutional Chaos as demonstrated by the National Democratic Party faction of continual lawfare and uni-party media manipulations.
Republicans don’t disrespect Democrats or Independents (that’s where they get new Republicans), but the purpose of political affiliation is to establish common beliefs on public policies from open party debate. Nonpartisian elections allow candidates to hide their beliefs from voters, electioneer contests, and play havoc with the process which benefits big money establishment uni-party candidates.
More debate on principles, beyond personalities, provides more honest representation in office after election.
,Ranked-Choice Voting & Open Primaries
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