History
Oklahoma’s earliest advocate of initiative and referendum was
Theodore L. Sturgis of Perry, who founded the territory’s Direct Legislation
League in 1899, eight years prior to statehood. The I&R movement soon
picked up a formidable champion: Robert Latham Owen, who became
the state’s U.S. senator. Through the efforts of Sturgis’ growing League, 102
of the 112 delegates elected in 1906 to Oklahoma’s founding
constitutional convention were committed in writing to supporting I&R. In
early 1907 the convention voted 80 to 5 to include I&R in the constitution.
Oklahoma’s I&R provision, however, contained a quirk that was to cause
initiative proponents endless headaches: it required that for any ballot
measure to pass, it must be approved not just by a majority of the ballots
cast on the proposition, but by a majority of all ballots cast in the election.
The state’s first successful initiative, which was on the ballot in a June 11,
1910 special election, proposed two questions in one: (1) Shall a
permanent state capitol be established, and (2) if “yes” on the first, shall
the capitol be at (a) Guthrie, (b) Oklahoma City, or (c) Shawnee? It
passed, and voters chose Oklahoma City by a wide margin, but the state
supreme court overruled their decision owing to the ballot’s deviation from
the single-question, “yes or no” norm. Nevertheless, Oklahoma City
ultimately became the permanent state capital.
In the August 1910 primary, Oklahomans passed an initiative requiring
a literacy test as a qualification for voting, which included a “grandfather
clause” that made it apply solely to blacks. The U.S. Supreme Court (223
U.S. 347) struck down the measure as unconstitutional. Yet the election
had been unfair for another reason as well: racist state officials, instead of
printing “yes” and “no” on ballots, printed in small type: “For the
amendment.” Anyone wishing to vote against it was supposed to scratch
out those words with a pencil. If they left their ballot as it was, it was
counted as a vote in favor. In some precincts voters were not even
provided with pencils. Casting further doubt on the accuracy of the 1910
vote count was a “literacy test” measure placed on the ballot by the
legislature in the 1916 primary, six years later: voters rejected it by a 59
percent margin.
On the 1910 ballot, voters rejected an initiative to allow liquor sales in
cities, which had been prohibited in Oklahoma’s original constitution. It
was the first of several Prohibition-repeal initiatives. The Oklahoma humorist
Will Rogers would later say, “Oklahomans vote dry as long as they can
stagger to the polls.” Indeed, liquor was so plentiful that voters in 1914
passed an initiative to make “drunkenness and excessive use of
intoxicating liquors” cause for the impeachment of elected officials.
In 1912, a majority of the voters favored one initiative to require the
direct election (by the people, instead of by state legislators) of U.S.
senators, and another to move the state capital to Guthrie. The first was
superseded by passage of the Seventeenth Amendment to the U.S.
Constitution, ratified the following year, while the second failed to win a
majority of all ballots cast in the election.
The worst victim of the supermajority requirement was the 1914
gubernatorial candidate Charles West, who sponsored four initiatives: one
to reduce the number of appellate courts, a second to reduce the
property tax by 29 percent, a third to tax oil and gas production, and a
fourth to abolish the state senate, thereby creating a unicameral
legislature. All four garnered majorities of ballots cast on each proposition,
but not majorities of the total cast in the election, and therefore failed.
In 1916 this unfair requirement brought down two more initiatives, to
the chagrin of their Socialist sponsors. Ironically, the measures were
designed to ensure the fairness of elections. One would have altered
voting registration procedures; the other would have created a state
election board composed of three members, one appointed by each of
the state’s three major political parties (the Socialists were the third-largest
party at that time). In the 1920s, corruption in state government prompted
an initiative to establish a procedure to convene the legislature promptly
to investigate allegations of corruption; it passed by a nearly three to one
margin but was thrown out by the state supreme court, which ruled that it
was not the proper subject of a constitutional amendment. When the
court threw out a 1926 initiative that would have established a procedure
for contesting property tax levies, however, its sponsors persisted: they
rewrote their initiative in conformity to the court’s requirements, and voters
passed it the second time in 1928 by a margin of nearly five to one.
The Great Depression hit Oklahoma hard, and Oklahomans turned to
the initiative process to propose economic reforms. Among these were a
1935 initiative establishing a state welfare program and appropriating $2.5
million for it (passed by a 65 percent margin); a 1936 initiative increasing
the automobile tag and sales taxes to provide assistance to needy elderly
and disabled persons and children (approved by a 60 percent margin);
and a 1936 constitutional amendment authorizing the latter initiative
statute (passed by a 62 percent margin).
In the 1940s Oklahomans passed initiatives that provided retirement
pensions for teachers (1942), allowed local property tax increases to aid
schools (1946), and allowed the legislature to raise additional school funds
(1946).
The only initiative to gain approval in the 1950s was a 1956
reapportionment measure; despite a four to three margin in favor, it failed
to get a majority of those voting in the election. In the 1960s two more
initiatives failed for the same reason: a 1962 reapportionment proposal
and a 1964 measure changing the property tax limits. In 1974 the state
constitution was finally amended so that an initiative would win if a
majority of those voting on the individual initiative approved it.
However, in 2001, the state legislature placed a constitutional
amendment on the ballot (to be voted on in November 2002) that would
require twice the number of signatures for initiatives pertaining to wildlife.
This action was taken to stop animal protection advocates attempts to
ban cockfighting in the state.
Excerpted from the Initiative & Referendum Almanac by M. Dane Waters.