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Oklahoma’s voter turnout has been one of the lowest in the nation in recent years, and political forecasters don’t expect the trend will change today. OK Policy has shared a series of posts on why democracy is broken in Oklahoma. A large number of state lawmakers have already been reelected because no one filed to challenge them in the general election. On the OK Policy Blog, Steve Lewis discussed a few close state legislative races to watch today. An 81-year-old Democrat challenging Rep. Markwayne Mullin for a U.S. House seat in eastern Oklahoma has died from injuries he sustained in a car accident.
The Oklahoma Attorney General ruled that the Workers Compensation Commission must hold its deliberations in public. The Tulsa World discussed why a woman with terminal brain cancer who moved to Oregon to obtain a physician-assisted suicide would not be able to do that in Oklahoma. OETA’s Executive Director said he had been asked by the Legislature to develop plans for operating the public television network without state funding. Oklahoma City Public Schools has nearly quadrupled the size of its curriculum department in recent months, but officials say the district remains severely understaffed compared to similarly sized districts.
Since new abortion restrictions took effect in Oklahoma on Saturday, one of the two abortion clinics in the state has been forced to halt its services. Another law taking effect Saturday makes several prescription drugs now subject to Oklahoma’s drug trafficking laws. Customers wanting to generate power from small wind turbines and solar panels without being assessed fees rushed to make their installations fully operational by Saturday. Controversial statements by Oklahoma Rep. Sally Kern and Rep. John Bennett were featured in a segment on John Oliver’s HBO show about the importance of voting in state elections. The Oklahoma Center for Community and Justice is launching a campaign against anti-gay and anti-Muslim rhetoric by state legislators.
Thousands of newly digitized American Indian records held by the Oklahoma Historical Society are now available to Ancestry.com subscribers. October revenue numbers brought more bad news for Kansas’ budget, which has faced huge shortfalls after the state approved major income tax cuts. The Number of the Day is the median annual wage of a substance abuse counselor in Oklahoma in 2013. In today’s Policy Note, Vox discusses why the most important elections happening today are for state offices, not Congress.
In The News
It’s Election Day, go vote: State turnout trending downward
Oklahoma voters may be hard-pressed to reverse their apathetic drift of the past few election cycles in Tuesday’s general election. Oklahoma’s voter turnout has been one of the lowest in the nation in recent years, ranking 49th out of 51 by one measure in 2012 and 44th out of 50 in another. The decline in both turnout and the percentage of the voting age population registering to vote began around 2006. With little to excite voters on the ballot and rain in the weather forecast, there isn’t much reason to think the trend will change on Tuesday.
Read more from the Tulsa World.
Volume of uncontested lawmaker seats ‘not the best thing for our community’
While most of the candidates on Tuesday’s ballot have been knocking doors, making phone calls and earning votes for weeks now, several state lawmakers are running unopposed and have quieter campaigns. When Republican State Senator David Holt set out earlier this month to knock doors with his two kids, Maggie and George, he wasn’t trying to get his name out. He’s helping out Republican state House Representative Jason Nelson that covers the same district the Northwest Oklahoma City metro. Nelson actually drew an opponent. Holt says that race is pretty close, and he had the time.
See also: Oklahoma’s Broken Democracy from Oklahoma Policy Institute
State legislative races to watch today
The 2014 elections are finally coming to an end tomorrow. In several states there are hotly contested, well financed campaigns that have filled the airways and mail boxes with campaign ads. In Oklahoma, not so much. Joe Dorman has waged a creditable campaign but still faces long odds having been able to raise only about a third of the money Governor Fallin has raised.
Read more from the OK Policy Blog.
Oklahoma U.S. House candidate dies after car crash
An 81-year-old Democrat in the race for a U.S. House seat in eastern Oklahoma died from injuries he sustained in a car accident, police said Monday. Earl Emmitt Everett, a retired school teacher and Korean War Veteran, died Sunday at a Tulsa hospital, said Fort Gibson Police Department investigator Stephen Farmer. Everett had been in a two-car accident Friday afternoon in Fort Gibson. Everett was a decided underdog in his race against first-term Republican U.S. Rep. Markwayne Mullin for the 2nd District seat that stretches across 26 eastern Oklahoma counties, from the foothills of the Ozark Mountains in the northeast to the Red River border with Texas in the south. An independent, Jon Douthitt, also is running for the seat.
Read more from the Associated Press.
AG ruling: Workers Comp Commission hearings must be open to public
State law requires the Workers Compensation Commission to deliberate in public, the Attorney General has ruled, noting laws and court rulings upholding the public’s “inalienable right to be present and heard.” The opinion puts an end to a quest by two of the commissioners to discuss appeals involving injured workers’ cases in closed sessions. “While we are aware that this conclusion may place the Commission in the unusual place of holding these deliberations in public, clear statutory language controls our analysis,” said the opinion from Attorney General Scott Pruitt’s office.
Read more from the Tulsa World.
Brittany Maynard’s path to death is one not available to Oklahomans
Marguerite Chapman has watched as two of her friends, a former teacher and a former classmate, withered and died from ALS disease. Chapman, a University of Tulsa emeritus professor of law, said one of her friends chose hospice care and died relatively quickly after calling her friends together one last time and saying goodbye. The other spent years fighting the disease, ultimately dying at home after he became able to communicate only through a series of blinks.
Read more from the Tulsa World.
OETA head: Network asked to produce plan sans state funding
Plans for operating OETA without state funding have been requested, OETA Executive Director Dan Schiedel told the Enid Rotary Club on Monday. “This year, I’ve been asked to present to the Legislature a plan on how OETA could operate — I think the operational word there is could operate — without state funding in a three-, five- and seven-year plan,” he said. “Short of an $80 million endowment, we’re going to need the help of the state of Oklahoma, in order to operate the state network.”
Oklahoma City Public Schools curriculum department needs more staff, officials say
Oklahoma City Public Schools has nearly quadrupled the size of its curriculum department in recent months but the district remains understaffed, a top official said Monday night. Aurora Lora, associate superintendent of student achievement and accountability, told the school board that poor academic performance by district students — particularly in math and reading — is directly related to a gap in curriculum support for teachers. “Last year we had five people in our curriculum department,” Lora said. “Most districts our size have between 40 and 80 people.”
One of Oklahoma’s two abortion clinics forced to close as new law goes into effect
Over the weekend, as most national news outlets turned their attention to the upcoming midterm elections, it got harder to get an abortion in the South — a region where the advancement of harsh restrictions on abortion clinics has ensured that women’s access to reproductive health care is increasingly under attack. Two new abortion laws — one that requires doctors to have admitting privileges with local hospitals, and another that places limits on the way that doctors are allowed to administer the abortion pill — took effect in Oklahoma on Saturday, after state judges upheld both measures. Since then, at least one of the two clinics in the state has already been forced to halt its services.
Some Prescription Drugs Now Subject to Oklahoma Drug Trafficking Laws
Certain prescription drugs are now included in Oklahoma’s drug trafficking laws. State Mental Health and Substance Abuse Commissioner Terri White said prescription drug abuse is an epidemic. “And it’s one that we have to get a handle on,” White said. “In fact, when we look at our statistics, Tulsa County has the highest rate of prescription drug overdose death of any county in our state, but they have the 18th-highest overdose death rate of any county in the United States.”
Read more from Public Radio Tulsa.
See also: Oklahoma’s biggest drug problem isn’t what you think from the OK Policy Blog.
Rush of Small Wind and Solar Installations as Regulators Prepare for Fee Requests
Customers wanting to generate power from small wind turbines and solar panels without being assessed fees rushed to make sure such installations were fully operational by Saturday, Nov. 1. The deadline was imposed by Senate Bill 1456, which “requires utilities to account for potential costs those customers impose” on electric utilities, The Journal Record‘s Sarah Terry-Cobo reports.
Oklahoma Reps. Kern, Bennett remarks on affirmative action, Islam featured on HBO’s ‘Last Week Tonight’
It happened more than three years ago, but the video of Oklahoma state Rep. Sally Kern talking about affirmative action from April 2011 is still getting aired. Sunday’s Last Week Tonight with John Oliver on HBO featured Rep. Kern’s statement “I’ve taught school for 20 years and I saw a lot of people of color who didn’t want to work as hard. They wanted it given to them.”
Read more from the Tulsa World.
OCCJ anti-bias campaign targets Oklahoma lawmakers
The Oklahoma Center for Community and Justice last week sent out a letter to its 1,565-member mailing list asking people to tell their state legislators they are concerned about anti-gay and anti-Muslim rhetoric by state officials. The letter campaign is an apparent response to comments made by state Rep. John Bennett, R-Sallisaw, in which he called Islam a cancer in American society, and by Gov. Mary Fallin, who has made statements suggesting that same-sex marriage does not represent Oklahoma values.
Read more from the Tulsa World.
Genealogy service to provide access to Oklahoma Indian archives
Thousands of newly digitized American Indian records held by the Oklahoma Historical Society are now available to Ancestry.com subscribers. The records, dealing primarily with the Five Civilized Tribes and Indian Territory, include the OHS’ massive Indian Archives Index, which until now has been accessible only as a card catalog at the Oklahoma History Center.
Read more from the Tulsa World.
Kansas tax cuts fail again, as new revenue numbers plague Sam Brownback but help Paul Davis
Late Friday afternoon, the state of Kansas released revenue numbers for the month of October. They were very bad news for the campaign of Gov. Sam Brownback, but good news for Paul Davis, with just days before Election Day. Simply put, this is more evidence that the Brownback tax-cut “experiment” is not working and Kansas voters need to oust him at the polls on Tuesday. The tax cuts are bleeding the state of needed funds to pay for high-quality public services to the people of Kansas. If the revenue problems continue, the next governor is going to have to cut services to the people — and certainly halt proposed bigger tax reductions in their tracks.
Read more from the Kansas City Star.
Quote of the Day
“This year, I’ve been asked to present to the Legislature a plan on how OETA could operate — I think the operational word there is could operate — without state funding in a three-, five- and seven-year plan. Short of an $80 million endowment, we’re going to need the help of the state of Oklahoma, in order to operate the state network.”
-Oklahoma Educational Television Authority (OETA) Executive Director Dan Schiedel, speaking to a Rotary club on Monday. State funding currently comprises about one-third of OETA’s budget (Source: bit.ly/10nbpy0)
Number of the Day
$34,321
Median annual wage of a substance abuse counselor in Oklahoma in 2013.
Source: OESC 2013 Wage Report.
See previous Numbers of the Day here.
Policy Note
The most important elections happening today aren’t for Congress
The most consequential races on Tuesday’s ballot are likely the ones where you don’t recognize the names. They are the elections for state legislators — and they absolutely matter. Little legislation gets passed these days in DC, and that’s not expected to change after tomorrow. But statehouses are furious hubs of activity, churning out thousands of new laws annually, covering everything from the availability of abortion to how much is spent on education to whether or not to participate in Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion. That puts a lot at stake in tomorrow’s election.
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