A potential election on S.Q. 836 in Oklahoma could play a role in the midterm elections.

Ray Carter, director of the Independent Journalism Center in Oklahoma, points out the danger in the question: “Activists seeking to eliminate primaries as the mode of selecting party candidates in Oklahoma argue that shifting to a California-style “open primary” will produce more ‘moderate’ candidates – even though the California system routinely limits voters’ choices to two candidates from the same political party during the general election.”

That system was credited with the election of Eric Swalwell of Chinese denizen Fang-Fang fame in California.

Swalwell’s U.S. House website brags that as a member of the U.S. House Intelligence Committee, he “helped lead the House Investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, and later, the first and second impeachments of Donald Trump.”

Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte recently sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi requesting an investigation of Swalwell for alleged mortgage and tax fraud, based on allegedly false and misleading statements Swalwell made related to the purchase of a $1.2 million home in Washington, D.C., that he claimed as a primary residence.”

Oklahoma’s present election system allows Republican voters to pick Republican nominees in party primaries while Democratic voters do the same in their party’s primaries, with the two parties’ candidates then facing off in the November general election along with any independent candidates who file for an office.

S.Q. 836 needs to be defeated in Oklahoma. It’s another left-wing trick.

Had SQ 836’s California-style primary system been in place in Oklahoma in 2018, for instance, voters’ choices would have been limited to two liberal Democrats in that year’s governor’s race.

An initiative-petition effort is under way to collect 172,993 valid signatures to place SQ 836 on the ballot in Oklahoma.

The out-of-state “Open Primaries” group is a major player in that effort and lists Oklahoma as one of the state campaigns it is backing.

Carter explains: In Oklahoma’s 2018 gubernatorial race, there were 10 candidates who filed to run as Republicans and two who filed to run as Democrats. In the June 2018 primary, 452,606 Oklahomans cast a vote for a Republican gubernatorial candidate compared to just 395,494 votes cast for a Democrat.

But under SQ 836’s California model, the November ballot that year would have pitted Democrat Drew Edmondson against Democrat Connie Johnson with no Republican option for Oklahoma voters. Because the Republican vote was split 10 ways in the primary, no GOP candidate received more votes than the second- place finisher in the Democratic primary during the initial round of voting.