Small: No need to “California” Oklahoma elections

No need to “California” Oklahoma elections

By Jonathan Small

This week, the group Oklahoma United called for abolishing our state’s primary election system and replacing it with a “jungle primary” in which the top two candidates proceed to the November general election ballot regardless of party.

Oklahoma United’s proposal is substantially based on California law. So, if you think California politics represent the ideal, this plan is for you. But for most Oklahomans, that alone is a giant red flag.

Currently, Republicans and Democrats choose their party nominees in primary elections, and during the general election in November all voters choose between those two nominees and any third-party or independent candidates who run.

That system has worked well for decades.

But Oklahoma United argues it would be better if all candidates were placed on the same ballot in a primary, with political affiliations listed, and all voters participated. The two candidates receiving the most votes would then proceed to the general election.

In practice, that system could easily lead to the effective disenfranchisement of most Oklahomans. 

In 2018, the last time the governor’s race involved no incumbent, 10 Republicans and two Democrats filed, providing 12 total candidates. There were 452,606 votes cast for a Republican candidate in that year’s primary and 395,494 for a Democrat. Despite the overall preference for a Republican candidate, if Oklahoma United’s top-two California system had been in place the general election would have been between Democratic candidate Drew Edmondson and Democratic candidate Connie Johnson.

Why? Because the Republican primary involved so many candidates the vote was split and no Republican received more votes than the total cast for Edmondson or Johnson.

Thus, Republican voters in Oklahoma—a group that represented about two in three votes cast in this year’s presidential race—would have had no option for governor in November 2018.

The top-two California system was used in this year’s Tulsa mayoral race, although the municipal jungle primary did not list candidates’ partisan affiliations.

Tulsa mayoral elections have shifted between the two parties over the last 20 years, meaning both parties have been competitive.

But under the top-two California system, Tulsa voters wound up with two Democratic candidates for mayor in November. Monroe Nichols, the most liberal of the two, won. 

Similar results have occurred in California. When Kamala Harris ran for attorney general of that state in 2010, prior to California’s adoption of the top-two jungle primary, she narrowly won election, receiving 46.1 percent of the vote to 45.3 percent for the Republican candidate (with the remainder cast for independents). But when she ran for the U.S. Senate in 2016 under the top-two system, Harris ultimately faced off against a fellow Democrat on the November ballot and won easily. 

How should Oklahomans respond to Oklahoma United’s plan? With a hearty, “Don’t California our Oklahoma.”

Jonathan Small serves as president of the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs.