Sen. Coffee Authors Bill Making County Offices Nonpartisan

Senate Republican Leader Glenn Coffee has filed legislation which would make county elected positions nonpartisan. Those positions would include offices such as county commissioners, sheriffs, treasurers and county clerks. Sen. Coffee said the idea makes sense on a number of levels.

“Increasingly we’ve seen election cycles where many voters never had an opportunity to cast a ballot for county offices. That’s because the election is decided either in the primary or the run-off. If all the candidates running for a county office are from one party and the voter is another, that citizen is left out of the process,” Coffee explained.

Under Senate Bill 38, all candidates for county offices would run for offices in a nonpartisan primary election. A candidate receiving a simple majority would be elected to the offices. If no candidate received a majority, the two receiving the highest number of votes would face each other in the General Election.

“With this legislation, we’d eliminate the need for a run-off election, which would save manpower and money, and open up the process to more of our citizens,” Coffee said.

“District Judges already run as nonpartisans throughout Oklahoma. This legislation would simply extend that to other county offices,” Coffee said.