This past Friday, the State Legislature voted to end the 2014 Session a week early. This action resulted in a final resolution on the passage of HB2134 being out of reach. With its updated language being provided by the conference committee just two days before the vote end the session, the bill never had time to gain the proper votes for final passage.

This was precisely the result I feared would happen if the bill went to a conference committee. No ballot access bill has made it passed any conference committee in Oklahoma. Had the House just approved the Senate version of the bill, we would be in a far better place today. I had explained that to Rep Echols, but he felt that the possibility of the bill being challenged on Single Subject grounds to be too great.

For now, Oklahoma is right back where it has been for many many years, with the worst ballot access laws in the nation. If nothing changes in the next two years, we will likely be in exactly the same place we were two years ago, as the only state in the US with two candidates for President on the ballot.

We will be working closely with the Legislature and Rep Echols over the next year to get ballot access reform passed.

The Conference Committee assigned to HB2134 has submitted its recommended version of HB2134, the ballot access bill. This bill had gone to a conference committee after the Senate greatly amended the bill and the House rejected those amendments. The main problem Rep. Echols and other House members had was the potential for a single subject rule based lawsuit over the Senate version.

In this new version of HB2134, the Conference Committee recommends that the party qualification petition language be stripped from the bill and leaves in tact most of the changes to the Presidential petitions for Independent and unqualified party candidates. However, the bill goes a further than the Senate version by further reducing the signature requirements to 1.5% rather than the Senate’s 2.5%. It also leaves in tact the current deadlines rather than the Senate’s reduced deadlines.

Overall, this would be a positive change. Instead of the little over 40,000 signatures needed under current law to get an Independent presidential candidate on the ballot, a little over 20,000 would be all that is needed. According to Ballot Access News, this removes Oklahoma from the worst presidential ballot access space it currently holds. With this change, it is far more likely that Oklahoma would have more than 2 candidates on the 2016 ballot even if no new parties gain recognition in the state.

As of now, the proposal does not appear to have the approval of the Senate side of the Conference Committee. That side is comprised of Senator Marlatt and a few others. With only one week left in the Legislative Session, it is imperative that we convince Senator Marlatt and the rest of the Conference Committee to act on this proposal.

The Senate has now appointed its conference committee members for HB2134. On the House side, the conference committee will be made up of the House Rules Committee, consisting of Representatives Russ, Cooksey, Dorman, Floyd, Quinn, Watson and Wright. The Senate side will consist of Senators Marlatt, Griffin, Holt, Ford, Bass, McAffrey. All voted in favor of HB2134 so that there is little fear that they will turn down whatever compromise comes down the pipe.

While ballot access bills have had a poor track record for conference committees in previous sessions, we have a much higher hope for a positive resolution this year. Representative Echols is very much in favor of getting a good bill pushed through this session and he has high confidence that Senator Marlatt will work closely with him in finding a resolution to the differences in the different versions of the bill. While I have some ideas of what the final bill will look like, I am waiting for an official copy of the bill before making any statements in that regards. I will say that it will likely not be 100% what we want from the bill.

We urge you, if your Representative or Senator is a member of either of this conference committee, to please call them and ask them to find a compromise and pass it through. We will be reaching out to all members of this Conference Committee as well.