Speaker 1: Good morning, good morning, good morning, good morning, and welcome, welcome, welcome.
Speaker 1: It's time now for our community connection on K one,
Speaker 1: the one you Trust. We have Senator Julie Daniels in
Speaker 1: studio and Senator first of all, welcome.
Speaker 2: Well, thanks Tom, it's been a while. Yeah, we'd be
Speaker 2: back with you this morning.
Speaker 1: It is always a pleasure to have you in our studio.
Speaker 1: We've got an election coming up. Your election has already
Speaker 1: said and done, correct, So we're not talking about your situation.
Speaker 1: But we're talking about something that affects everybody, and that
Speaker 1: would be a state question and the retention of judges
Speaker 1: that appear on our ballot. And people get a little
Speaker 1: they said, well, I'm going what's this exactly? Now, we're
Speaker 1: going to tell them what this is.
Speaker 2: Yes, first of all, on the two state questions, Yes,
Speaker 2: one is very straightforward. We're amending one word in our constitution.
Speaker 2: Our constitution already says that all citizens of the United
Speaker 2: States may vote in Oklahoma if they meet our registration
Speaker 2: requirements residency requirements. But there was a move this year
Speaker 2: among states that have that language to improve on it
Speaker 2: and say only so you're going to say all US
Speaker 2: citizens can vote you're going to change that to only
Speaker 2: US citizens can vote, and I supported that joint resolution
Speaker 2: of the House and the Senate, so.
Speaker 3: That is on the ballot.
Speaker 2: The other one that I supported would allow us to
Speaker 2: create public infrastructure districts in our state. It's a peculiarity
Speaker 2: of our constitution that there are many things that businesses
Speaker 2: can do in other states that we have to amend
Speaker 2: our constitution to allow. And this is one of the
Speaker 2: reasons that we are less competitive at times with other states,
Speaker 2: is because we have a structure that discourages some sort
Speaker 2: of entrepreneurism and growth. So this one says, if a
Speaker 2: developer wants to build houses and has brought a plot
Speaker 2: of land to build houses, but the municipality either cannot
Speaker 2: afford to extend the infrastructure or they're going to delay
Speaker 2: doing that can get one hundred percent of the property
Speaker 2: owners to sign and say we will be responsible for
Speaker 2: the property taxes to build the infrastructure, not our neighbors
Speaker 2: across the street in another neighborhood, but those of us
Speaker 2: in this contained area, we will do it. And that
Speaker 2: allows the development to go forward and not be delayed.
Speaker 2: But you have to have permission from the government to
Speaker 2: do it. You have to have a petition a board
Speaker 2: of trustees. And this is where it gets a bit
Speaker 2: confusing because people see government in there and think, oh,
Speaker 2: this is going to be on my property taxes. No,
Speaker 2: it absolutely is not, and it's confusing to read. You
Speaker 2: file a petition in the municipality, you have signatures of
Speaker 2: one hundred percent of all the surface property owners. Then
Speaker 2: the district is governed by a board of trustees. They
Speaker 2: can issue bonds to pay for infrastructure and can charge
Speaker 2: the property owners up to ten mills to pay for
Speaker 2: that infrastructure. This is something that there are people in
Speaker 2: Tulsa who want to build some developments and they are
Speaker 2: not allowed to do so. And I would encourage people
Speaker 2: to just google Public Infrastructure district and look at Fort Worth. Again,
Speaker 2: Texas has been doing this for a while. You can
Speaker 2: click on pid fort Worth and it will show you
Speaker 2: all the neighborhoods in Fort Worth that are governed by
Speaker 2: public infrastructure districts. And I think if people look and
Speaker 2: see how they actually operate, they will understand that unless
Speaker 2: you're one of these property owners, and unless you have agreed,
Speaker 2: then you would not be liable for any increased property taxes.
Speaker 3: To pay for infrastructure.
Speaker 1: That's a lot of words to make it easy.
Speaker 2: Well, and that's why it's a lot of words on
Speaker 2: the ballot. I'm looking here and I would be happy
Speaker 2: to share more details on that with folks who want
Speaker 2: to be in touch with me. But I have no
Speaker 2: problem with either one of these state questions. So now
Speaker 2: let's move to the retention ballot.
Speaker 1: Let's do that. Yes, that's where it gets.
Speaker 2: We have a number of Court of Civil Appeals and
Speaker 2: Court of Criminal Appeal justices up for retention in Oklahoma.
Speaker 2: Once appointed, a justice serves six years and then the
Speaker 2: public decides whether.
Speaker 3: Or not they should be allowed to remain on the bench.
Speaker 2: We've been doing it that way for forty plus years
Speaker 2: and we have never ever voted a justice off the bench. Okay, well,
Speaker 2: there have been some problems in recent years with our
Speaker 2: Supreme Court, especially since after one hundred plus years of
Speaker 2: one party rule, we sort of evolved over into the
Speaker 2: majority party changing in our state. And since that time,
Speaker 2: we have found that our Supreme Court has gone out
Speaker 2: of its way to change the policies of the legislature
Speaker 2: when it doesn't agree with them, not to decide what
Speaker 2: the law is, which is what we've been doing in
Speaker 2: this country for hundreds of years since Marbury versus Madison
Speaker 2: is the case where it was originally said it's the
Speaker 2: job of a justice to decide what the law is,
Speaker 2: not what they want to be. And we have an
Speaker 2: instance here in Oklahoma of numerous cases where the judges
Speaker 2: have tied themselves in knots to figure out a way
Speaker 2: to say that what the legislature did is unconstitutional, which
Speaker 2: it isn't. In fact, the power of the legislature in
Speaker 2: Oklahoma is much more expansive than the power of Congress.
Speaker 2: Our constitution gives the legislature much more expansive power to
Speaker 2: decide public policy than the US Constitution does. So, if anything,
Speaker 2: our justices should be more deferential to our elected legislature
Speaker 2: than they are.
Speaker 1: Are you saying that they don't stay in their lane.
Speaker 2: I am saying that they don't stay in their line,
Speaker 2: And quite often they act as a super legislature wearing
Speaker 2: black robes, and they use some devices in our constitution
Speaker 2: that make it easier for them to do that. So,
Speaker 2: for the first time ever, we have a judicial scorecard
Speaker 2: of our Supreme Court justices. Everybody to remember this, go
Speaker 2: to OKLA Judges oaklajudges dot com and you can call
Speaker 2: up the scorecard for all nine of our Supreme Court
Speaker 2: justices and you can look at.
Speaker 3: How conservative or liberal they have been.
Speaker 2: And you can click on the twenty cases that have
Speaker 2: been analyzed and been used to judge their conservatism or liberalism,
Speaker 2: and you can look at what the nature of those
Speaker 2: policies were that they overturned. Interestingly enough, I began serving
Speaker 2: in the session of twenty seventeen. Of the twenty cases
Speaker 2: that are assessed in this scorecard, sixteen of them were
Speaker 2: decided since I've been in the legislature, so we have
Speaker 2: had an increase in activism to overturn what the legislature
Speaker 2: has done. So oaklajudges dot com and we are looking
Speaker 2: this year at having voters consider whether or not Justice Edmundson,
Speaker 2: Rich and Caugar should be retained. Justice Edmondson has a
Speaker 2: twenty one percent rating. Gurrich has an eighteen percent rating,
Speaker 2: and so does Justice Caugar. Our largest rating right now
Speaker 2: is Justice Kune, who came on in twenty twenty one
Speaker 2: with an eighty five percent rating. Justice Edmondson's been there
Speaker 2: since two thousand and three. He was appointed by Brad Henry,
Speaker 2: Justice Gurrich since twenty eleven, appointed by Brad Henry, and
Speaker 2: von Kauger since nineteen eighty four, appointed by then Governor
Speaker 2: George nine nineteen eighty four nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 1: That's a long time.
Speaker 2: So all I'm asking people to do is go and
Speaker 2: look at the scorecard and look at the cases and
Speaker 2: make your own decision as to whether or not you
Speaker 2: believe it's time for a change, and for the first
Speaker 2: time to say no, these justices are outside their lane
Speaker 2: and have been so concentsistently enough that we think there
Speaker 2: should be a change. Now, how do you decide how
Speaker 2: to judge a justice. It's not the same as the
Speaker 2: scorecards for legislators. Those are much more political. This is
Speaker 2: based on particular cases where they've overturned the elected representatives
Speaker 2: of the people, where they have disrespected the separation of powers,
Speaker 2: and they have determined that because they don't like the
Speaker 2: legislator legislative policy, they will change it. Conservative principles mean
Speaker 2: they respect their role as an interpreter, not a maker
Speaker 2: of the law. And so that's what this scorecard was
Speaker 2: based on. And I'm just going to go we've got
Speaker 2: a couple of minutes. I'm just going to hit on
Speaker 2: two cases that I think are very timely because they
Speaker 2: have to do with election integrity. In twenty twenty COVID,
Speaker 2: the legislature was out of session for six weeks.
Speaker 3: Fortunately we had not adjourned.
Speaker 2: We came back in right after the League of Women
Speaker 2: Voters went to our Supreme Court and asked them to
Speaker 2: throw out our absentee ballot notarization requirement. We're within weeks
Speaker 2: of the primary election. Ballots to military are going out.
Speaker 2: Think of the chaos and the undermining of the integrity
Speaker 2: of the election would have been had that decision stood.
Speaker 2: It is definitely in the purview of a legislature determine
Speaker 2: election law. It's one of our basic responsibilities. We don't
Speaker 2: do it at a federal level. Every single state has
Speaker 2: their own way of doing it, so we scrambled. It
Speaker 2: was an odd decision. They didn't really explain their methodology.
Speaker 2: They found something about affidavits in a section of law
Speaker 2: that had nothing to do with elections, and they hung
Speaker 2: their hat on that as a reason that they ordered
Speaker 2: we could not send out any absentee ballot information about note.
Speaker 3: We couldn't send it out they forbid us to do it.
Speaker 2: So we came back in and we quickly fixed things
Speaker 2: because we hadn't adjourned yet, and we got through our
Speaker 2: primary election. We got through our primary runoff. Now all
Speaker 2: three of these justices voted to throw out our election laws.
Speaker 1: Why not? They did it in Chicago.
Speaker 2: So then the Democrat Party went to federal court and
Speaker 2: sued us, wanting to get rid of the voter ID
Speaker 2: laws and other things. And an Obama appointed federal judge
Speaker 2: decided with the legislature on every argument. Let that sink
Speaker 2: in your own. Oklahoma Supreme Court justices five to four said,
Speaker 2: we don't like the voter ID laws, even though we
Speaker 2: upheld them a few years ago. We don't like the
Speaker 2: way the legislature's doing this. They wanted ballot harvesting. We
Speaker 2: had passed a statute saying you couldn't do that. They
Speaker 2: wanted ballot harvesting. They wanted us to pay for the postage.
Speaker 2: They accused the state of putting a poll tax on
Speaker 2: people because they had to buy their own stamp. And
Speaker 2: what if they didn't have a printer at home to
Speaker 2: print out their ID to attach it to their ballot,
Speaker 2: which we were allowing during COVID. So the point is
Speaker 2: that our own Supreme Court disrespected the role of the
Speaker 2: legislature and the federal court. An Obama judge actually wrote,
Speaker 2: the state has put in place alternatives that do not
Speaker 2: necessarily acquire voters to have direct contact with others in
Speaker 2: order to cast an absentee ballot. The evidence and the
Speaker 2: law substantiate that the state's interest in preventing voter fraud
Speaker 2: and promoting certainty and confidence are sufficiently weighty to overcome
Speaker 2: any minor burden placed on Oklahoma's voting during a pandemic.
Speaker 2: That was the Obama appointed judge. That's the decision we
Speaker 2: needed out of our own Supreme Court three months before.
Speaker 2: So that, I think is the clearest example. A lot
Speaker 2: of the other cases have to do with workers compensation
Speaker 2: and lawsuit reform, all of which helped Oklahoma improve its
Speaker 2: economic standing, its business climate standing, and as they undermined us.
Speaker 2: In twenty nineteen, we went into the judicial hellhole of
Speaker 2: the American Tort Reform Association with one of their decisions,
Speaker 2: and we are moving back down the scale in workers'
Speaker 2: compensation costs in our state because they're chipping away at
Speaker 2: that reform that took several years to pass, so I
Speaker 2: don't know where we are on timetime. You tend to
Speaker 2: talk to me and I just go like this, So
Speaker 2: why don't you ask me another question?
Speaker 1: First of all, when we go into the voting boat
Speaker 1: and we see the sample ballads, you can get that
Speaker 1: at the voter portal. You can do that. And the
Speaker 1: question is on the judge, shall this justice be retained? Yes,
Speaker 1: sir no, And it's a yes or no. That's all
Speaker 1: you got to do. Just want to make sure that
Speaker 1: people are clear on that.
Speaker 2: If you would prefer these justices to stay, vote yes.
Speaker 3: If you think it's time for them to go, vote no.
Speaker 1: Very good. In the same way with the state question,
Speaker 1: is it plain yes or no? There's no maybe or
Speaker 1: how about this yes?
Speaker 2: And obviously I've made no secret of my own feelings
Speaker 2: about these different issues in these state questions, but I
Speaker 2: mainly am here today to say to folks you've asked
Speaker 2: for years, how do we know about these justices? Well,
Speaker 2: here's an organization that has taken up on themselves to
Speaker 2: score them.
Speaker 1: And where do we find that score Cardigan.
Speaker 2: Judges dot com, ud Judges dot com. You can click
Speaker 2: on each judge and learn more, and you can find
Speaker 2: out where how they were on each of these decisions,
Speaker 2: these twenty decisions. Obviously there are multitude of decisions that
Speaker 2: could have been scored, but they were looking for the
Speaker 2: ones where they outright overrode the legislative policy.
Speaker 1: Very good, Senator Danis, thank you for being with you well,
Speaker 1: Thank you very much.
Speaker 3: And I encourage people to get in touch with me,
Speaker 3: I to have questions.
Speaker 2: I've had several people with absentee ballots already reaching out
Speaker 2: to me saying, Oh, I didn't know about all these judges.
Speaker 3: What do I do? So I'm steering them to this
Speaker 3: website already.
Speaker 1: Thank you again for being here. Thank