Last Updated on January 19, 2023, 7:29 AM | Published: January 19, 2023
OKLAHOMA CITY — A candidate disqualified by the Oklahoma County Election Board to run for Oklahoma City Council Ward 2 is appealing to the Oklahoma Supreme Court to force his name back onto the ballot.
The election is February 14. Because time is short, would-be candidate Chris Cowden and his attorney Robert Gifford are asking the Supreme Court to claim original jurisdiction and then issue a writ requiring the Election Board to return Cowden’s name to the ballot.
Wednesday, attorneys for Cowden, the City of Oklahoma City, and an assistant Oklahoma County DA all had an opportunity to present their positions to the referee of the Supreme Court as a first step in the justices deciding if they will even weigh in on the case, and if so, to what extent.
Problems with candidacy
Cowden originally filed to run against incumbent James Cooper for the Ward 2 City Council of Oklahoma City seat.
But, as Free Press reported, there were problems with Cowden’s filing.
Cooper’s campaign found that even through Cowden had owned a home in Ward 2 since 2016, he had still been registered and voting from his parents’ home address in Nichols Hills up through the primaries at the end of June 2022. That violated the City’s Charter for eligibility to run for a City Council seat.
Election Board strikes name
Cowden’s main challenge, through his attorney Robert Gifford, is the City’s interpretation of the section of the City’s charter that determines the qualifications for a ward seat that says:
For a Councilmember position representing a ward, the person must have been a registered voter at an address within the ward for at least one year immediately preceding the filing of a declaration of candidacy.
City of Oklahoma City Charter
In a hearing before the Oklahoma County Election Board, Cowden’s attorney argued that the language requiring a candidate to be a registered voter along with residency for one year “could be read at least a couple of different ways.”
Gifford argued that another way of reading the language could be that a person who wished to be a candidate had to live in the ward for a year but only had to be registered to vote somewhere and not in the ward.
The members of the Election Board were not convinced. In a unanimous vote, the Board decided to strike Cowden’s name from the ballot.
Hearing before Supreme Court referee
Cowden filed an appeal to the state’s Supreme Court in December 2022 in hopes that the highest court in Oklahoma would agree to consider the case. (To learn more, see the document at the end of this article.)
Wednesday, attorneys for all parties presented their positions to the referee of the Supreme Court.
It was already understood that no decision would be made immediately. The referee is the first step in a sorting process to test and then report the positions in a case to the justices for consideration.
The decision on what the court does next could come down in days or weeks.
Arguments
The key position of the City is that the language about qualificatons is very clear and that there is no state law that pre-empts that part of the City’s Charter. Those were two points Cowden’s attorney Gifford made in the petition.
The City’s response to Cowden’s petition also says the “Petitioner’s construction of the Charter provision is clearly strained.”
The City’s written response continues:
In essence, his interpretation is at odds with Oklahoma statutes concerning voter registration, which provide that voters are only eligible to register ‘in the precinct of his or her residence,’ not prior residences, as Petitioner would ask this Court to accept.
Another key point of Cowden in the petition is that people should be allowed to be candidates and not pose a number of restrictions on who can run.
The City argued that the language of the City’s Charter was to “prevent frivolous candidacies” where people would simply drop into a city at the last minute and file for a city office.
Later in the day Wednesday, Gifford, Cowden’s attorney told Free Press, “… at the end of the day, you know, the benefit of the doubt should go to a potential candidate, if there’s any doubt whatsoever. If it’s possible to be read in any other way then the benefit the doubt has to go to the candidate.”
But, in the City’s written response, they cite the Tenth Circuit’s decision in a case that “there is no recognized fundamental right to candidacy.”
Aaron Etherington, Oklahoma County Assistant DA, filed a response for the county Election Board asking the court to decline the request for original jurisdiction on “grounds of non-justiciability” or not appropriate for that particular court.
Cowden’s petition to the Oklahoma Supreme Court
Cowdens-petition-for-orig-jurisdiction-and-writ-of-mandamusCity of Oklahoma City’s written response
1054115368-20230118-085210-DA’s office response
1054116608-20230110-130225-
Founder, publisher, and editor of Oklahoma City Free Press. Brett continues to contribute reports and photography to this site as he runs the business.
