VOICE defends voter initiative petitions against backlash
[Excerpts]
After five years of sweeping policy changes led primarily by voters in the state’s metropolitan areas, the Republican-controlled Legislature is poised to make substantial revisions to the initiative petition process during the 2021 legislative session.
Lawmakers have filed roughly 30 bills to modify signature thresholds, require financial impact statements and extend the time period to file legal objections against petitions.
“I think (the Legislature) may feel what seems like a loss of power,” said Sundra Flansburg, an organizer with the civic engagement group VOICE. “If we can’t get our legislators to work for us, we have this mechanism to go around them.” . . . Flansburg said VOICE helped with efforts to pass Medicaid expansion in 2020 and criminal justice reform in 2016 after failed conversations with lawmakers.
“We had tried to bring voices to our representation, and they were unwilling to do anything,” Flansburg said. “So we shifted energy toward the initiative petitions.”
That shift in focus worked.
It took 25 years — 1989 to 2014 — for Oklahomans to approve six citizen-led state questions (one was later ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court). Voters have approved four state questions between 2016 and 2020.
Flansburg, the [leader] with VOICE, pointed to lobbyists and outside groups that dole out campaign contributions to lawmakers and are welcomed inside the state Legislature every year.
“Citizens really lack that in a lot of ways, and the initiative petition process is one way that we can have that power,” she said.
