Every two years, state election officials print the names of each recognized political party in the state, put them in a box clad in American flags and draw them out one by one to determine their order of appearance on the November ballot.
This year, Republican candidates will be listed first, then Democrats, and finally Libertarians.
Election Board Secretary Paul Ziriax said state officials have used this process since the late 1990s.
"There was a lawsuit against the state challenging a state law that required the Democratic Party to always be first on general election ballots, and I believe it was someone associated with the Republican Party who filed suit against the state and won," Ziriax said. "And so that developed into the process we use today, which actually, I think, is much fairer."
Ziriax is referring to the 1996 Western District of Oklahoma case Graves v. McElderry, in which a federal judge ruled Oklahoma's law requiring Democrats to appear on the ballot first violated the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment.
The ruling forced a then majority-Democratic legislature to quickly devise a new system for determining the candidate order on ballots t for subsequent elections. Lawmakers opted for a random "lot-style" drawing system during the 1997 regular legislative session.
The last time the procedure was amended was in 2011, but we still mostly use the same system today as it's written in Oklahoma statute. It goes as follows:
Preparation: The recognized political parties (Republican, Democrat and Libertarian) are printed on separate pieces of paper of equal size, shape, color and thickness. Representatives of each party then get an opportunity to inspect the pieces of paper to make sure they are all, in fact, the same. Then, the election board secretary folds each of them and puts them in an obscured and sealed box, which is also inspected.
Drawing: Next, a person selected by the election board secretary who is not a candidate for public office or a party representative (in this case assistant election secretary Rusty Clark) draws each of the pieces of paper.
Assignment: As each paper is drawn, the party name is announced and assigned its order-of-appearance on the ballot. The results determine the party ballot order for all regular and special partisan elections for the next two years.
Independent candidates in competitive races for state-wide office will appear after those of other parties in the order they're drawn. The drawn order also applies to District and Associate District Judges, who are elected in non-partisan elections.
In attendance at this year's drawing were several staff members from other agencies, the press, party representatives and advocates from civic nonprofits. Among them was Chair of the Libertarian Party Kenny Blevins. He was there to formally represent his party but didn't get to because he lacked the written signatures of two central Libertarian committee members.
Still, Blevins said, it's important for the public to witness this part of the election process to ensure continued fairness and transparency. Whether there is a real advantage to being at the top of the ballot, he said, is hard to tell.
"I don't know if it's better to be first or if it's better to be last, or if it's better to be in the middle," Blevins said. "I know that some people do just walk in and mark the first candidate down there, and some look through and go, well, I don't like him. I don't know him…he's better than the other two and just vote the last one."
At the end of the day, he said, keeping up with election processes like this helps people stay informed and prepared for election day.
"We get really tied into either establishment party and their focus is fighting each other," he said. "And the more that they fight each other and the more the media covers that, the less people know that they have other options."
For sample ballots leading up to the election, visit the Oklahoma State Election Board website and log in to the OK Voter Portal.
