Oklahoma House Speaker Kyle Hilbert’s take on primary elections is off: The system is broken

The top Republican in the Oklahoma House is disingenuously trying to insult our intelligence by insisting that last week’s election sent a clear message that voters support the “conservative” work that the House Republicans have been doing.

It does nothing of the sort. 

If House Speaker Kyle Hilbert actually understood statistics and how our primary system really works, he’d realize what the rest of us do: Last week’s election was an emergency flare that something is inherently broken in our primary system. And, both his party and its Democratic counterpart are failing to connect with Oklahomans.

The outcome shows that the GOP’s inability to understand our state’s rapidly changing voter ideology has alarmingly created a group who think their input doesn’t matter – or is ineligible to vote.

Nearly 3 in 4 registered voters sat out last week’s election, according to statistics published by the State Election Board. These are Oklahomans who at one point had enough faith in our state that they took the time to register to vote, but have since apparently become so disillusioned with our government — or apathetic about it — that they don’t think it’s worth their time to exercise one of their core democratic rights. 

Perhaps voters feel like there’s nothing they can do to stop the amazing “conservative Republican work” that has sent us careening off a cliff to crash land in bottom 10 rankings in actual issues that matter: healthcare, education, child wellbeing, etc., etc., etc.

Whatever the reason, last week’s turnout ranked among the worst in almost a decade. 

That’s despite Republican gubernatorial candidates spending close to $22 million of their own money ahead of the election. That’s despite the plethora of mailers that have inundated Oklahomans’ mailboxes for the past two months, letting them know a major election was to occur on June 16. And that’s despite a deluge of unwanted text messages urging us to pay attention to candidates.

In fact, more voters showed up in 2018 to vote on legalizing medical marijuana and in 2020 to determine the fate of Medicaid expansion, records show.

Only 26% of voters actually cast a ballot on June 16.

While the partisan turnout breakdown won’t be available until well into next month — I would guesstimate that over a third of those who did vote weren’t able to weigh in on the “conservative Republican work” that Hilbert is so proud of.

I base that on the fact that about 402,900 Republicans cast ballots in the GOP gubernatorial, which was the top partisan contest on the primary ballot. Nearly 630,100 voted on the only nonpartisan ballot issue open to all voters, a state question proposing raising the minimum wage.

The difference indicates 36% of voters were either independents, Libertarians or Democrats. Libertarians, by the way, didn’t have any contested primary contests so they couldn’t vote on partisan contests either. 

In case Hilbert has forgotten, Oklahoma’s partisan primary contests are closed to independents. Under state law, Democrats, Republicans and Libertarians — our state’s three recognized political parties — have the option to open their contests to independents. 

This year, none did.

That refusal to allow independents to vote on partisan contests disenfranchised one of the fastest growing subsets of Oklahoma voters. Ahead of the election, nearly 495,500 Oklahomans were registered as independents and about 23,500 were Libertarians.

But lest you worry your pretty little head about that minor detail, Hilbert’s office sent out a press release that stated the “people of Oklahoma sent a resounding message on Election Day that they support the conservative Republican work being done by the House of Representatives.”

He pointed out that only one incumbent House Republican is headed for a runoff.

He thanked the people for “the confidence they have placed” in his fellow Republicans and in him.

I’m glad someone is seeing a silver lining in this because I think this a reflection that Republicans have a fundamental misunderstanding of how our primary system works or they’re intentionally obfuscating the reality here that they’re making it impossible for hundreds of thousands of Oklahomans to participate in the democratic primary process. 

Because if we forced both Democrats and Republicans to open their primaries and let independents, who currently comprise nearly 1 in 5 voters, weigh in, then perhaps we’d have significantly higher turnout.

Those outcomes Hilbert is so proud of might have been different too.

Opening primaries would allow Hilbert to more safely draw a conclusion about the overall sentiment of voters.

In Hilbert’s district, which encompasses part of Tulsa and Creek counties, slightly more than 4,900 Republicans voted in his race, which secured him another two years. That’s a little over 12% of his approximately 39,200 constituents.

Statistically speaking, that tells us little more than that he managed to mobilize his supporters more than his opponent, and that an ever-growing pool of voters’ voices and opinions are not being captured at the ballot box.

That is not how democracy is supposed to work. 

Hilbert is correct. Voters did send a “resounding message.” He just misinterpreted it. Their message is that our election system is inherently broken.

So the real question is are Republicans going to learn from the message their constituents left by staying home, or will they continue to abide in their self-imposed fairy tale?