By Steve Byas

The Jungle Primary being pushed by Democrats, “moderate” Republicans, and political consultants needs to be defeated. One way to make sure that it never becomes law is that it never gets on the ballot. So, do not sign the petition that would place this bad idea on the ballot.

In Oklahoma, if an initiative petition for a proposal gets the signatures of 15 percent of the number of voters who participated in the last election for governor, the present closed primary system could be replaced.

The jungle primary would replace Oklahoma’s current closed primary system – a system in which only Republicans can vote in the Republican primary to choose the party’s candidate for the general election. The jungle primary would be even worse than a normal “open” primary, in which a person, regardless of registration, can vote in any party’s primary. But the voter must chose only one party in a normal open primary. In contrast, all candidates, regardless of political party – or no party at all – run in one, “jungle” primary, although the candidates would still be identified on the ballot by political party, or in the case of an independent no party at all.

If no single candidate received a majority of the vote, the top two vote-getters would then advance to the general election.

Had such a system been in effect in 2018, the last time we had no incumbent governor on the ballot, two Democrats would have advanced to the general election! This is because there were only two Democrats running, and the Republican vote was more split up, as there were several more candidates running as Republicans.

Even in the situation in which the general election offered both one Democrat and one Republican, the voters could be left with two bad choices. For example, several years ago in Louisiana, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan and a former governor who had been indicted on charges of corruption emerged from the jungle to spots on the general election ballot in the gubernatorial race. Both would have been highly unlikely to win their respective party nominations, but with multiple candidates on the ballot, they had just enough support to place first and second in a crowded field.

Proponents of the jungle primary concept are rather explicit as to why they want to replace the state’s closed primary system – they are sore because Democrats and openly “moderate” Republicans do not win very often in Oklahoma, and they see this scheme as a way to slip a non-conservative candidate into office.

Sure, they give other reasons. One excuse they offer is that Oklahoma has low voter turn-out, and they argue that the jungle primary would cause more Oklahomans to cast a ballot. Exactly why it is a good idea to entice more low-information voters to the polls is not explained, but it should be noted that many political scientists rank “satisfaction” with the status quo as the number one reason that a person does not vote. In other words, most Oklahomans are rather contented with the dominance of the Republican Party in the state, and the dominance of more conservative candidates for office. It is when voters are more dissatisfied that they are more likely to vote.

Interestingly enough, the mayor of Oklahoma City, David Holt, whose Oklahoma Conservative Index rating was a dismal 13 percent conservative when he was a state senator, favors the jungle primary. And his arguments are that we would have more “moderate” candidates like him (how is 13 percent conservative “moderate?) and it would increase voter turnout. The truth, however, is that more citizens vote in partisan elections, in which candidates are identified by political party than in non-partisan elections, like city council races and school board races in which candidates do not run with a political party identification on the ballot. Yet, the same people who argue for the jungle primary, saying that it would increase voter turnout, usually do not want city council races and school board races to be partisan.

Hypocrisy.

It makes no sense to have Democrats choosing which Republican should represent that party on the general election ballot. It would be like Methodists choosing the deacons in a Baptist church, or like Hindus selecting the next pope.

And, while these proponents of the jungle primary argue that they are “moderates,” the truth is they are more to the Left than in the Center. Take one proponent, former Oklahoma Congressman Mickey Edwards. When he was elected to Congress in 1976, he ran a conservative Reagan Republican, and as a recently “born-again” Christian. After 16 years in Congress, he was ousted in a Republican (closed) primary, after he was part of the House Bank Scandal, in which he was writing a blizzard of checks, beyond what money he had in his checking account.

Since leaving Congress, Edwards has renounced Christ and joined the globalist Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the globalist Aspin Institute, and has publicly announced his votes for Democratic presidential candidates Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris. I attended an event at OU a few years back, when Edwards promoted this jungle primary nonsense, in which he used the example of Utah’s U.S. Senator Mike Lee as the type of Republican we needed to avoid. Senator Lee is consistently among the top conservatives in Congress, yet jungle primary advocate Mickey Edwards does not like him.

This is telling. What Mickey Edwards wants, what David Holt wants, what these jungle primary advocates all want to accomplish is to move the Republican Party to the Left, and elect more Democrats and more RINOs like them.

Kill this insane jungle primary idea. Do not sign the petition.

This should give us a clue as to what this is all about.

Steve Byas is Editor of the Oklahoma Constitution and author of several magazine articles and books, including History’s Greatest Libels. He may be contacted at byassteve@yahoo.com