Speaker 1: Good morning, good morning, good morning, Welcome, welcome, welcome TOIME
Speaker 1: now for our early burned version of the Community Connection
Speaker 1: on K one, the one you Trust. It is now
Speaker 1: eight twenty three. Julie Daniels is in with us. By
Speaker 1: the way, congratulations on your election. It's final.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much, Tom, and thank you to the
Speaker 2: voters and Senate District twenty nine for allowing me to
Speaker 2: serve a final four year term as your senator.
Speaker 1: Oh well, congratulations. We got a lot to do today
Speaker 1: because other things are still up in the air and
Speaker 1: up for consideration on the ballot, and some people are
Speaker 1: getting two pages, are getting three today, but you're here
Speaker 1: to talk about one that's on the.
Speaker 2: Main ballot, right and before we get to that, if
Speaker 2: you do want to know about your sample ballot, where
Speaker 2: your precinct is all that, you can go to Oklahoma
Speaker 2: State Election Board. You can go elections dot ok dot
Speaker 2: gov and click on the voter portal. You put in
Speaker 2: your name and your date of birth, and you pop
Speaker 2: up and it will tell you where you vote, and
Speaker 2: it will tell you exactly what you're voting on. For instance,
Speaker 2: I'm in Jim Kurd City Council Board and he didn't
Speaker 2: have an opponent, so I won't be voting for city council.
Speaker 2: Other people will, so you'll know before you go to
Speaker 2: the polls. These are the things I'm voting on. And
Speaker 2: remember that the ballots are front and back, so remember
Speaker 2: to fill out the backside. Oh and there's the county
Speaker 2: question about alcohol sales. Somebody asked me about this. So
Speaker 2: since the eighties in Washington County, we have not allowed
Speaker 2: alcohol to be only to be sold from noon until
Speaker 2: midnight I think it is. And when New Year's hits
Speaker 2: on a Sunday, it really cut back on the revenue
Speaker 2: from different and other counties have it as early as
Speaker 2: eight until two in the morning. So this is what
Speaker 2: we're asking people to consider. Do you want to expand
Speaker 2: the hours of alcohol sales? And that's why the county
Speaker 2: put that on, But it's just to put us in
Speaker 2: line with other counties if you think that that would
Speaker 2: be a good idea. So I want to come here
Speaker 2: and talk about voting for the judges. There's a whole
Speaker 2: slew of them. There are a Court of Criminal Appeals,
Speaker 2: Court of Civil Appeals, and then we have three Supreme
Speaker 2: Court justices on the ballot. Now sixty years ago, the
Speaker 2: people voted on two state questions. One was, we want
Speaker 2: to continue to elect our justice's non partisan, we'll take
Speaker 2: the party affiliation, we want to continue to elect them.
Speaker 2: And the other one was we're going to let a
Speaker 2: non elected group of people make a list of three
Speaker 2: names and give it to a governor, and the governor,
Speaker 2: who's elected by all the people, will choose from that list.
Speaker 2: Both of these state questions got a majority of the vote,
Speaker 2: and the one to continue to elect justices got the
Speaker 2: most votes. But the folks who wanted to put in
Speaker 2: the system where the bar Association would have undue control
Speaker 2: over the process because of the composition of this unelected committee,
Speaker 2: they put in language that said, even if the other
Speaker 2: one gets more votes, we still win. So for sixty
Speaker 2: years we've had a scheme in place that really didn't
Speaker 2: reflect the will of the people at that time. But
Speaker 2: they threw a bone to the people. They said, but
Speaker 2: we're going to have a retention ballot, so every six
Speaker 2: years you can decide whether or not to keep the
Speaker 2: justices that we put in place, without your governor getting
Speaker 2: to choose from anybody in the state, just getting to
Speaker 2: choose from this list. But they never thought anybody would
Speaker 2: ever actually act on that, because we've never unretained a justice.
Speaker 2: But when we finally did shift the politics of this
Speaker 2: state after one hundred years and Republicans did take control
Speaker 2: of the government, which you know back and forth, that's
Speaker 2: good for the republic. The last vestige of being able
Speaker 2: to hold on to some of the Democrat control was
Speaker 2: through the courts, and that is what we face today
Speaker 2: since I was elected. Sixteen of the twenty cases that
Speaker 2: have been assessed on oklajudges dot com ok l a
Speaker 2: j u DGEs dot com have been decided since I
Speaker 2: took office in twenty sixteen, and they are all rolling
Speaker 2: back what the majority party passed. We're the legislatures. The
Speaker 2: governor signs the stuff that we or doesn't signs the
Speaker 2: stuff that we pass. But in the constitution we do
Speaker 2: the policy. That's the role of the legislature. And when
Speaker 2: they haven't been comfortable with what we've done, they've gone
Speaker 2: to the courts. And we have Supreme Court justices who
Speaker 2: are willing to say, well, we'll just be legislators with
Speaker 2: black robes. We'll find a way to get the result
Speaker 2: we want because we don't like the policy, and that
Speaker 2: is what has happened over and over again, and that
Speaker 2: is why I'm recommending that we vote no on these
Speaker 2: three justices and show for the first time in sixty
Speaker 2: years that the voters are paying attention. If you vote
Speaker 2: for a certain party in hopes that they can put
Speaker 2: their policies in place, then you should also want a judicial,
Speaker 2: a judiciary that also stays in their lane. So you
Speaker 2: can vote for a particular person for Senate or House
Speaker 2: or governor.
Speaker 3: But if what they do is then undone.
Speaker 2: By justices who are, in my view, abusing their power,
Speaker 2: then you don't make any progress. So one of the
Speaker 2: examples I'll give, we passed lawsuit reform in two thousand
Speaker 2: and nine. It was a huge fight and it was
Speaker 2: a giant bill. We really rewrote the civil code for lawsuits.
Speaker 2: And the Supreme Court it was in place for about
Speaker 2: four years. They picked around at it, picked out around,
Speaker 2: and finally the Supreme Court throughout the whole thing, saying
Speaker 2: it was law, ruling that we had put too many
Speaker 2: measures together in one package, and therefore because it violated
Speaker 2: the single subject rule of our Constitution, they threw the
Speaker 2: whole thing out. Not it been in place for four years,
Speaker 2: but they wanted it to go away because it did
Speaker 2: make us more competitive with other states. Texas had done
Speaker 2: this years before, and so my point is that was
Speaker 2: not their role because in previous legislatures when the Democrats
Speaker 2: were in charge, they completely rewrote the criminal Code, completely
Speaker 2: rewrote it. They didn't throw that out as violating the
Speaker 2: single subject law. It had many more sections than the
Speaker 2: lawsuit reform had, but they didn't like the lawsuit reform,
Speaker 2: and so.
Speaker 3: They found a way to throw it out.
Speaker 2: That's what I'm appealing to people to think about today
Speaker 2: is to put them on notice that the voters are
Speaker 2: paying attention and that they truly should operate and determine
Speaker 2: what the law is and not what they wanted to be.
Speaker 2: They shouldn't be finding ambiguity where none exists. For instance,
Speaker 2: they took a law that had been on the books
Speaker 2: for decades that says you only get treble damages in
Speaker 2: a car accident when there's no injury, where just the
Speaker 2: car is damaged and you left the scene, we'll charge
Speaker 2: you three times. Let's say you did one thousand dollars
Speaker 2: worth of damage to somebody's car and you left the scene,
Speaker 2: not knowing whether or not somebody had been injured or not,
Speaker 2: you're going to pay three thousand dollars they could do that. Well,
Speaker 2: trial lawyer came along and said, we think that ought
Speaker 2: to apply when there are injuries too, But that's not
Speaker 2: the way the law was written and had been on
Speaker 2: the books for years. So they tied themselves in knots
Speaker 2: and they actually looked at the way the law was
Speaker 2: on the page and say, well, back in the eighties
Speaker 2: they had this section on page two, and now they've
Speaker 2: moved it to page three, and they've redone the sections.
Speaker 2: We don't think they really intended only to be only.
Speaker 2: They literally re wrote the law to get the result
Speaker 2: they wanted. So this is what we're urging the people
Speaker 2: to consider when they go to vote. It's happened over
Speaker 2: and over again, and I would like us to show
Speaker 2: that in the future the appellate justices do need to
Speaker 2: be aware that the folks are paying attention. And so
Speaker 2: that's why I'm well, I've already voted, because I voted
Speaker 2: on Thursday. It's a big issue. It's a little bit
Speaker 2: difficult to understand. We've asked for years for information on
Speaker 2: judges and now the Oklahoma Council for Public Affairs, which
Speaker 2: is our conservative thing tank in Oklahoma.
Speaker 3: They've done this assessment.
Speaker 2: I actually worked on picking some of the cases that
Speaker 2: they should look at. And when you go to Oakland
Speaker 2: Judges dot com this morning, before you go to the polls,
Speaker 2: call it up. Look at the three justices on the ballot.
Speaker 2: There's campaign material that says they're liberal.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah they are.
Speaker 2: And the anti people say they're protecting the state from
Speaker 2: the extremists they mean conservatives because they don't want to
Speaker 2: say the word conservative because a lot of us are conservatives,
Speaker 2: so they say the word extremists. We stopped the extremists,
Speaker 2: and the no side is calling them liberal and they're
Speaker 2: liberal and their decisions because they're jumping outside of their lane.
Speaker 2: But you can go to Oakland Judges dot com and
Speaker 2: read about it make.
Speaker 3: Up your own mind.
Speaker 2: I think it would truly send a signal to the
Speaker 2: justices that you should look very carefully before you simply
Speaker 2: undo what the elected representatives of the people put in place.
Speaker 2: Do we have one more minute? Okay, here's another one.
Speaker 2: We changed the dui loss and we changed them so
Speaker 2: that there weren't as many roles for the trial lawyers.
Speaker 2: There weren't as many ways for them to sue. They
Speaker 2: got all upset about this because this is the way
Speaker 2: some of them make their money. They sued. None of
Speaker 2: them had been charged with dui. They weren't the defendants.
Speaker 2: They sued, saying it was unconstitutional because it would affect
Speaker 2: their pocketbook. They wouldn't have as many d UI clients
Speaker 2: in court. And our Supreme Court said, that's enough standing,
Speaker 2: that's enough, that's enough injury to.
Speaker 3: You to throw this dui lag. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: So, I mean we get creative when we want a
Speaker 2: certain result, we get creative, and that, sadly is what
Speaker 2: they have done over the years. Because nobody is holding
Speaker 2: them to account today, I hope that we hold them
Speaker 2: to account.
Speaker 1: All right, Senator Daniels, thanks for being here with IS
Speaker 1: today in the Congratulations on your victory.
Speaker 3: Thank you for great