Voting law under siege

As expected, progressive groups wasted no time renewing their fight to undo Oklahoma's law requiring that absentee ballots be notarized. This time the challenge is in federal court and the outcome will be worth watching.

Last month, the League of Women Voters and other groups asked the state Supreme Court to allow absentee voters to return their ballots with a signed declaration that they were qualified to vote and had marked their own ballot. The groups said the notarization requirement was a “substantial obstacle” to those who didn't want to vote in person during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The high court granted the request. But the Republicancontrolled Legislature immediately approved a bill, signed by Gov. Kevin Stitt, that reinstituted the notarization requirement. The bill also said that when emergency declarations are in effect, absentee voters may skip notarization and instead sign the ballots and include a photocopy of an ID such as a driver's license.

That's not close to good enough for the Oklahoma Democratic Party and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which want a federal judge to declare unconstitutional several of the state's voting provisions.

Requiring a ballot to be notarized during the pandemic, or having voters include a copy of an ID card with their absentee ballot, is “onerous and unnecessarily burdensome,” the groups say in their recently filed lawsuit. They want a judge to stop the state from enforcing the notary requirement so long as absentee voters have signed their ballot affidavit.

Alicia Andrews, chairwoman of the state Democratic Party, called Oklahoma's voting process “archaic” and said, “The additional barriers to the mail-in voting process do nothing more than further suppress the votes of marginalized groups and put citizens in harm's way under the false claims of reducing voter fraud.”

That criticism might be taken more seriously if the federal lawsuit didn't compare the postage needed to return an absentee ballot to a poll tax.

Progressives oppose just about any rules that require some effort on the part of voters. Voter ID laws are demonized as infringing on the poor, minorities, the elderly and other groups, even when those laws include provisions that provide voters a wide berth, as is the case in Oklahoma, where voters who show up at the ballot box without proper ID can cast a provisional ballot. The Oklahoma Supreme Court upheld the state's voter ID law in 2018, saying it does not cause an undue burden.

Groups such as those challenging Oklahoma's law want to make voting requirements as lax as possible, either via extended early voting or allowing people to register and vote on the same day. The pandemic has provided a new opportunity to press for these changes and others

Critics of Oklahoma's notarization requirement for absentee ballots note that only two other states do the same. Fair enough. Yet this is what the Legislature supports. Changing the requirement should also come via the legislative process.