Mullin Election Case May Become A Supreme Court Battle

The late Earl Everett, candidate

 Oklahoma's congressional delegation involves 5 Representatives, one of whom is Republican Markwayne Mullin, representing the traditional "Little Dixie" Democrat region and the Eastern side of Oklahoma.

  His little-known Democrat challenger was Earl Everett, a retired school teacher & Korean War veteran.  Earl died on Sunday, about 50 hours before the polls closed in the general election he was a part of.

  Now, the poorly-written state law indicates that a party nominee needs to be replaced by a substitute candidate (of the party's choosing), and the state is supposed to scrap the general election for that office & replace it with a special election involving all the living candidates plus the one replacement candidate. But the law seems silent about how to initiate the action? Does the dead person's party need to file a Contest Of Election with the state election board, in order to initiate the remedy? Or does the Governor have to be omniscient and even while campaigning in her own re-election she needs to be aware of the life status of every candidate in the state? If it's the governor's job to know and initiate all action, I can just imagine the resulting daily robo-calls to all party nominees:

• [phone rings to candidate during a stump speech]: "Hello, this is the governor's office, calling  daily, to make sure every candidate is still alive. If you are alive, press 1 ."

  It would be sensible to assume the affected party needs to notify the election board that they no longer have a living candidate, even though voting is already underway. 

Wallace Collins
ODP Chair

  Everything seems to hinge on whether the Democratic Party filed the contest by Friday at 5pm. (assuming a contest is needed to trigger the nullification of the 2nd District balloting). The Oklahoma Democrat State Chairman, Wallace Collins, complained to the media, last Friday; but there remains no report of a filing of contest at the state election board.

"Hello, this is the governor's office, calling  daily, to make sure every candidate is still alive. If you are alive, press 1 ."

  It's sort of a "statute of limitations." and I do not believe it can be extended after the fact.    And it may be subject to certification by the 2015 State legislature, as was mentioned in the legal case involving the Tulsa District Attorney case (Kunzweiler v Jordan)

  This is going to be challenged by Democrats in Oklahoma District  court & deferred to  the Oklahoma Supreme Court. 

Badly-written laws result in governance by edict & questionable precedent.

  If this does result in a December ruling from the Oklahoma Supreme Court, it could trigger a  Federal case.

David Van Risseghem

  And this may even go to the US Supreme Court, because in Bush v Gore, the Federal ruling states that the power to determine a state's representation was given to the legislatures of each state and not the courts of those states.

Oklahoma Democrats Lose More Ground

Senate Democrat Caucus Shrinks

  The Sooner GOP took over at least 4 more State Senate seats on election day. Dstricts 2, 5, 8, & 26 were open seats formerly held by Senators Burrage, Ellis, Ballenger, & Ivester.

  Three of the districts are in eastern & Southeastern Oklahoma. The impact breaks down the traditional "Little Dixie" dynasty which had been the safest Democratic stronghold in Sooner Politics.
 What this means is that the entire senate Democrat caucus can all ride to the inauguration in my minivan. This is a stark contrast to the legislature of 30 years ago, when Gene Stipe had a firm grasp on all powers and made a good career and significant personal wealth from his elective successes.  Stipe recently died in a federal prison after being convicted for election related corruption charges.
  In other state political news, the GOP won all statewide and federal office elections for at least the next 2 years. The current majority in the Oklahoma House of Representatives will remain essentially unchanged with GOP officials holding all but around 29 of the 101 seats.

David Van Risseghem

Election Night On The web

Bing Elections Website

National Results
   There are several web tools for keeping informed on the election night happenings.  Nationally, the Associated Press, Politico, and Bing have some great features. CNN & Fox News also do a decent job of covering the national scene.

The Old Google Elections interface. It was great for 2012

   Google Elections used to be my favorite, but they seem to have disappeared without a trace or change of address. Any web search for Google Elections will take you to their Google+ effort.
  The disappearance of Google is a big mystery. Bing and others will benefit greatly from this screw up. 

Oklahoma Results

NewsOn6 / News9

KOTV, in Tulsa, along with the sister station in OKC ( KWTV channel 9), have demonstrated a superior commitment of manpower and planning for the past few election cycles. But they are not the only player in town. 

  Local coverage got a big setback because of the state legislative action of a few years back.

Oklahoma Election Board

    Whereas county election boards used to release tabulated results immediately; they now have to send all data to the state election board. The backlog of data sits there until state bureaucrats get around to each of the 77 counties. Only after that data is confirmed and input, can the numbers be reported from the state election board. Lately that has added an hour or more of delay.
  Media outlets have filled in that gap with local poll-runners who capture neighborhood precinct results even before the precinct staff can return the box to the county election board office, in downtown Tulsa. But the poll-runners from media outlets only typically get less than 10% of the precincts.

TV
Unless you tune in to the OETA network, you'll likely have to spend the evening watching NCIS, the Voice, or other pop culture offerings in order to get those little tidbits of partial returns and teases for their 10pm coverage.

Radio

  For radio coverage, KRMG of Tulsa has been a standard of news coverage. This year they partner with Fox23 to share the news crews. We'll see how well that works? KFAQ does a lot of talking, but their low-budget operation lacks a real news crew out in the communities.  

  Oklahoma City has KTOK & KOKC stations for news and talk. It's not clear how much real news can be expected from them.

Blogging

30+ Bloggers are featured
at SoonerPolitics.org

  There are a massive number of bloggers providing great coverage and often they break news stories from the "smoke filled rooms" and party headquarters.  SoonerPolitics.org is one of the best aggregate feed sources for over 30 conservative bloggers and news sources.

  Of course we have to add social media to the list of election coverage. Facebook, Twitter, and other outlets have extensive Oklahoma content, but you have to find and add yourself to each of the  groups found on these websites. SoonerPolitics has a page and discussion group on Facebook.

David Van Risseghem

Obama Claims The Support Of Dorman & Others

A political cartoon photo depicting the allegiance
of Joe Dorman to the Obama political platform

  The October 20th edition of The Hill headlines a quote from Democrat president, Barack Obama.

  The very unpopular liberal president claims that the numerous Democrat candidates on next month's ballot have been supporters of his all along.

  He goes on to say that they support his liberal agenda.

  Oklahoma Democrat candidate for governor, Joe Dorman; has not commented on this latest "tip of the hand" coming from the head of his party.

  Yet the legislative voting record of Joe Dorman indicates that the president is accurate in identifying Dorman and others of pushing the liberal agenda from Washington, in the Oklahoma State House.

  Voters in the Sooner state are troubled by the thought that a stealth candidacy could extend the Obama agenda well passed the day when Obama leaves the White House.

David Van Risseghem

  The Oklahoma Democratic party is painstakingly trying to rebrand themselves as the image of midwestern conservatism. This effort includes wiping the word 'liberal' from their platform and plastering the state with photos of gun-toting, softball playing, members of the local PTA; who happen to run for political office.

Proclaiming Liberty In The Public Square

  Oklahoma is home to a spiritual culture with very specific values. Quite often the people have insisted on making laws which extent our common convictions into mandates.  But that shortcut has come back to bite us.

•  Blue laws don't lead to more sincere worship on Sundays.
•  Marriage restrictions haven't led to a low divorce rate.
•  Drug laws have led to record incarceration. City, county, and state budgets are untenable in providing the food, shelter, medical, and legal expenses.

  At the heart of the crisis we must acknowledge that our spiritual return to legalism has impacted our view of the role of government. We must face the reality that we relied way too much on legalism in our culture.  Now, political forces are gathered and empowered to enforce laws which are antithetical to our Oklahoma values. We have no philosophical argument against this so long as we maintain that we were correct in doing the same practice.

  In the debut message of Jesus' public ministry, he attended synagogue on the Sabbath. When called upon to address the attendees, Jesus read from the prophecy of Isaiah;

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed,"

  You can continue your legalism in your church if you want, but I would urge our culture to rediscover the Acts of the Apostles and the epistles to the early church.

  It would be very effective to rediscover the Libertarian message of the Christian faith. The Apostle Paul spent much of his letter to the Romans, in a discourse about spiritual liberty. His letter to the Galatians was even more blunt about libertarian tenants of the gospel message. The Book of Acts was continually confronting spiritual bondage to either sin, or the law of Moses. Peter, James, Paul, and other church leaders were continually pressing the issue of Liberty from both sin and the laws which had been ineffective to rescue people from bondage to sin.

David Van Risseghem