The Oklahoma primary electoral system was a

voting system An electoral system or voting system is a set of rules that determine how elections and referendums are conducted and how their results are determined. Electoral systems are used in politics to elect governments, while non-political elections ma ...

used to elect one winner from a pool of candidates using

preferential voting {{short description, Election systems Preferential voting or preference voting (PV) may refer to different election systems or groups of election systems: * Ranked voting methods, all election methods that involve ranking candidates in order of pr ...

. Voters rank candidates in order of preference, and their votes are initially allocated to their first-choice candidate. If, after this initial count, no candidate has a

majority A majority, also called a simple majority or absolute majority to distinguish it from #Related terms, related terms, is more than half of the total.Dictionary definitions of ''majority'' aMerriam-Webster primary election Primary elections, or direct primary are a voting process by which voters can indicate their preference for their party's candidate, or a candidate in general, in an upcoming general election, local election, or by-election. Depending on the ...

s in

Oklahoma Oklahoma (; Choctaw language, Choctaw: ; chr, ᎣᎧᎳᎰᎹ, ''Okalahoma'' ) is a U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States, bordered by Texas on the south and west, Kansas on the nor ...

when it was adopted in 1925 until it was ruled unconstitutional by the

Supreme Court of Oklahoma The Supreme Court of Oklahoma is a court of appeal for non-criminal cases, one of the two highest judicial bodies in the U.S. state of Oklahoma, and leads the judiciary of Oklahoma, the judicial branch of the government of Oklahoma.

in 1926.

System

If there were only two candidates, then a simple

first past the post In a first-past-the-post electoral system (FPTP or FPP), formally called single-member plurality voting (SMP) when used in single-member districts or informally choose-one voting in contrast to ranked voting, or score voting, voters cast their ...

election was held. However, if there were more, then voters were required to rank a certain number of candidates in order of preference (any voter who did not rank enough candidates would have the ballot voided): in a contest with three or four candidates, each elector would get two choices, and in a five-or-more-candidate race, three choices. If no single person received a

Worked example

In the above example, no candidate has 26 or more first-preference votes, so it is necessary to use the second-preference votes: each person's number of second-preference votes is divided by two and added onto their number of first-preference votes: this new total is shown in parentheses. None of these new totals exceeds the majority figure of 26 either, so the third-preference votes are now factored in. Each candidates number of third-preference votes is divided by three and added on, shown in square brackets. At this stage, Alice, Carol, and Dave all have totals in excess of 26, but Dave's total is the highest, so he is the winner despite being ranked first by fewer people than was Alice.

Adoption

The nomination for U.S. Senate of

impeached Impeachment is the process by which a legislative body or other legally constituted tribunal initiates charges against a public official for misconduct. It may be understood as a unique process involving both political and legal elements. In ...

former

Governor A governor is an administrative leader and head of a polity or political region, ranking under the head of state and in some cases, such as governors-general, as the head of state's official representative. Depending on the type of political ...

Jack C. Walton John Calloway Walton (March 6, 1881 – November 25, 1949) was an American politician and the fifth governor of Oklahoma. He served the shortest term of any Governor of Oklahoma, being the first Governor in the state's history to be removed from ...

is said to have "frightened" the state "into a system of preferential voting as an escape from minority nominations." In his Senate nomination, Walton received only "an extremely small per cent of the total votes cast," yet was still selected as the

Democratic Party Democratic Party most often refers to: *Democratic Party (United States) Democratic Party and similar terms may also refer to: Active parties Africa *Botswana Democratic Party *Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea *Gabonese Democratic Party *Demo ...

candidate,https://www.ok.gov/elections/documents/1922-1926_RESULTS.pdf and this perceived injustice led to the

Oklahoma Legislature The Legislature of the State of Oklahoma is the state legislative branch of the U.S. state of Oklahoma. The Oklahoma House of Representatives and Oklahoma Senate are the two houses that make up the bicameral state legislature. There are 101 sta ...

resolving to adopt a different electoral system. However, it was not until the final day of debate on the law that the workings of the system chosen were agreed upon. The decision to require voters to rank their preferences, which contrasted with most other states' procedures merely giving people the option of doing so (for that matter, only eight states used preferential voting at all), was an attempt to balance the competing concerns of preventing

bullet voting Bullet voting, also known as single-shot voting and plump voting, is a voting tactic, usually in multiple-winner elections, where a voter is entitled to vote for more than one candidate, but instead votes for only one candidate. A voter might do th ...

(people deciding to list only their first choice) and of not forcing people to give any vote to candidates they found unacceptable. The

Oklahoma Senate The Oklahoma Senate is the upper house of the two houses of the Legislature of Oklahoma, the other being the Oklahoma House of Representatives. The total number of senators is set at 48 by the Oklahoma Constitution.

Reaction

The initial adoption of what was a highly unusual electoral system caused significant comment in the media and in academia. The law was described as "the most interesting and important primary legislation of the year" by the ''

American Political Science Review The ''American Political Science Review'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal covering all areas of political science. It is an official journal of the American Political Science Association and is published on their behalf by Cambridg ...

'', which identified two particular features as particularly intriguing: firstly, the requirement that voters rank a certain number of candidates, and secondly, the "improvement" of giving lower-preference votes less weight: "Here, then, appears to be something new under the sun—compulsory preferential voting for all who take the trouble to come out to the primary!" However, the requirement to rank candidates was also described as "obnoxious" and unfair to people who found only one candidate acceptable.

Voiding

In 1926, the Oklahoma Supreme Court declared the 1925 law "null and void" and ruled that it was unconstitutional to "make it mandatory upon the voter to express a second choice when three or more candidates are running for a given office and a second and third choice when more than four candidates are running for a given office in order to have his vote counted" since such a principle could not "be harmonized with the constitutional guaranties that no power houldever interfere to prevent the free exercise of the right of

suffrage Suffrage, political franchise, or simply franchise, is the right to vote in representative democracy, public, political elections and referendums (although the term is sometimes used for any right to vote). In some languages, and occasionally i ...

." A

writ In common law, a writ (Anglo-Saxon ''gewrit'', Latin ''breve'') is a formal written order issued by a body with administrative or judicial jurisdiction; in modern usage, this body is generally a court. Warrants, prerogative writs, subpoenas, a ...

was issued banning elections from being held under the system. Subsequently, Oklahoma's brief stint of preferential voting was analysed as having been "unsatisfactory."

References