Politics

By Daniel Trotta

(Reuters) – A U.S. grand jury has indicted a jailed Pennsylvania man for threatening to kill the chair of the congressional committee investigating the January 2021 assault on the U.S. Capitol, prosecutors said on Wednesday.

Robert Vargo, 25, of Berwick, Pennsylvania, also threatened to kill the committee chair’s family and President Joe Biden, prosecutors said.

He was charged with threatening the president of the United States, threat by interstate communications, and influencing a federal official by threat, the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania said in a statement.

Reuters could not immediately identify the lawyer representing Vargo in order to seek a comment in his defense.

Vargo, who once escaped from the Pennsylvania jail where he is being held, could face up to 25 years in prison if convicted of the federal charges.

Prosecutors allege Vargo sent a threatening letter and white powder to the congressional office of U.S. Representative Bennie Thompson, chairman of the committee that is investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

The letter, which referenced the congressional probe and anthrax, also threatened U.S. District Court Judge Robert Mariani, according to prosecutors.

“I’m going to kill you! I will make you feel the rest of our pain & suffering,” the letter to Thompson said. “There is nowhere or nobody who can keep you from me. I am going to kill you & those you love.”

The letter also says, “You & Joe Biden soon will face death for the wrongs you’ve done to US.”

U.S. Capitol Police who investigated the threat found the white powder to be harmless.

Vargo sent the letter from the Luzerne County Correctional Facility, prosecutors said.

Vargo had escaped from the Pennsylvania jail in July and was caught several days later in South Carolina, according to media reports at the time that cited Luzerne County District Attorney Sam Sanguedolce.

(Reporting by Daniel Trotta in Carlsbad, Calif.; Editing by Matthew Lewis)

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TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kris Kobach, the Kansas Republican who helped lead Donald Trump’s short-lived presidential voter fraud commission, wants to rid his state of ballot drop boxes and says as he runs for attorney general that discounting talk of fraud is “ignoring reality.”

The expanded use of drop boxes for mailed ballots in 2020 didn’t lead to any widespread problems, according to an Associated Press survey of state election officials across the U.S. that revealed no cases of fraud, vandalism or theft that could have affected the results. And Kobach’s position puts him at odds not only with Democrats and voting-right advocates, but Kansas’ Republican secretary of state, Scott Schwab, who says the state’s elections are secure and drop boxes are safe.

Kobach, who was secretary of state for eight years before Schwab, said Wednesday that allowing drop boxes prevents Kansas from enforcing a 2021 law against what Republicans call ballot “harvesting,” making it illegal for individuals to deliver ballots for more than 10 other people. Voting-rights advocates see the law as unnecessary for securing elections and contend it only hinders assistance to poor, minority and elderly voters.

Kobach argued that with drop boxes, people can get a voter’s permission to deliver ballots and identify themselves on the ballot envelope with a false name and drop the signed enveloped in the drop box and officials can’t see that someone has delivered too many ballots. Election officials say the ballot would still be legal if the voter is properly registered and wanted to vote.

“There are still other layers of protection, but it makes our anti-harvesting statute pretty, pretty weak when drop boxes can be used to circumvent it,” Kobach said.

Kobach declared Tuesday night in a debate with Democratic opponent Chris Mann that the state “needs to get rid of drop boxes.” He said Wednesday that as attorney general he would urge the GOP-controlled Legislature to enact a law barring counties from using them.

“Those on the left who say there is no election fraud are simply ignoring reality,” Kobach said during the debate.

Mann said in a statement after the debate that eligible voters should have “equal access to the ballot box.”

“Ballot drop boxes make that possible,” he said.

As attorney general, Kobach could prosecute cases of alleged voter fraud, but he would have no power to tell counties how to run elections. He acknowledged that all he could do about ballot drop boxes is urge the Legislature to ban them.

Schwab has pushed back hard against attacks on drop boxes and said in a statement Wednesday that counties have used them for decades. Kansas counties deployed 191 of them in 2020, averaging one box for about every 10,000 registered voters.

“It’s an efficient way for Kansans to return their advance-by-mail ballot without allowing the federal government to be involved,” he added. “Drop boxes are more secure than the post office.”

Kobach’s race this year is an attempt at a political comeback after he gave up the secretary of state’s office to run unsuccessfully for governor in 2018 and lost a U.S. Senate primary in 2020. He championed stricter voting and voter ID laws years before Trump named him vice chair of his election fraud commission in 2017.

With the wide circulation among Republicans of Trump’s false statements that the 2020 election was stolen from him, Kobach has stopped short of publicly doubting Democrat Joe Biden’s victory.

But in his interview Wednesday, Kobach said “there’s no question” fraud occurred in 2020 at least the battleground states of Michigan and Pennsylvania. He added that Americans will never know “how many fraudulent ballots were cast.”

An Associated Press review last year of every voter fraud case from 2020 in the six presidential battleground states disputed by Trump found fewer than 475, not enough to make any difference.

Kobach still touts more than a dozen voter fraud prosecutions he launched as secretary of state, most over people voting in different places in the same election. Kobach also still takes credit for a 2013 Kansas law that required new voters to provide papers proving their U.S. citizenship to register.

The federal courts struck that law down. A judge found it only nominally prevented non-citizens from registering but violated Kansas residents right to vote. During its first three years on the books, 35,000 Kansas residents couldn’t register, amounting to one in seven applicants.

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Follow John Hanna on Twitter: https://twitter.com/apjdhanna

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HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — John Fetterman, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Pennsylvania, released a doctor’s note Wednesday saying he is recovering well from a May stroke as he vies for an open seat in a bare-knuckle campaign against Republican Mehmet Oz, who has questioned Fetterman’s fitness to serve.

Five months after the medical emergency from which Fetterman said, “I almost died,” he is fighting some lingering effects of the stroke — “the elephant in the room,” he called it at a recent rally. The lieutenant governor uses closed-captioning to quickly interpret and respond to questions, and sometimes stumbles over words.

In the one-page letter, Dr. Clifford Chen noted that Fetterman continues to endure effects of the stroke that involve speech and being able to respond quickly. But he said Fetterman exhibited no effects on his “cognitive ability” or his ability to think and reason after the stroke, which occurred just days before the primary election.

Fetterman “is recovering well from his stroke and his health has continued to improve” Chen wrote in the report after examining Fetterman on Friday. Chen, a primary care physician in Duquesne affiliated with the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, concluded that Fetterman “has no work restrictions and can work full duty in public office.”

Fetterman has declined to release a fuller suite of his medical records or provide access by reporters to his doctors or specialists. Some independent stroke experts consulted by The Associated Press said Fetterman appears to be recovering remarkably well as he campaigns.

Chen did note a couple lingering effects that Fetterman’s campaign has disclosed. An auditory processing disorder makes it hard for him to understand what someone might say to him. Fetterman has occasionally stumbled over words while speaking, but Chen said Fetterman’s communication is significantly improved after working with a speech therapist.

Fetterman’s recovery has played a significant role in the campaign.

Oz, a heart surgeon who has treated stroke patients, has accused Fetterman of lying about his health and suggested that the stroke has left Fetterman unequipped to serve effectively in the Senate.

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Neergaard reported from Washington.

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Follow AP for full coverage of the midterms at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections and on Twitter, https://twitter.com/ap_politics

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By Tim Reid

(Reuters) – The fight to become Arizona’s next attorney general in November’s midterm elections smashed fundraising records this week. One major reason: the normally backwater contest has potentially big implications for U.S. democracy, election experts said.

Arizona is a kingmaker state in U.S. presidential elections, and under Arizona law the attorney general must witness the certification of the election result, has the power to challenge certifications in the courts if they violate state law, and must approve the rulebook that governs how elections are run.

Former President Donald Trump has endorsed the Republican attorney general candidate Abe Hamadeh and appeared on stage with him. Hamadeh has offered his own endorsement: a full-throated support for Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him by President Joe Biden.

As a result, a race usually viewed as an electoral afterthought has attracted record amounts of money and attention from Democrats and Republicans.

Democratic nominee Kris Mayes raised $1.25 million in the third quarter of 2022, bringing her total amount of money received so far during the 2022 election cycle to $2.2 million, while Hamadeh raised $740,000 between July and September, bringing his total to nearly $1.8 million, according to Arizona’s office of Secretary of State.

That compares to a total haul of less then $2 million by both candidates in 2018, then an Arizona record.

The fate of U.S. democracy is not the only reason money is pouring into the race this year. The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to end a women’s constitutional right to an abortion triggered donations, and around the country attorney general races are garnering more attention and money generally because of their ability to enforce or block controversial policies.

Trump’s backing of Hamadeh is notable because it is unusual for a former president to endorse an attorney general candidate. Amy Klobuchar, a Democratic U.S. senator from Minnesota and a 2020 presidential candidate, meanwhile, appeared at an event with Mayes last month.

Klobuchar told Reuters it was vital to elect officials, including attorney generals, “that are critical frontline protection when it comes to voting and elections.”

The importance of the attorney-general race is underscored by polls showing that Republicans Kari Lake, who is running for governor of Arizona, and Mark Finchem, the secretary of state candidate, could win this November. If victorious, they would have control over how votes are counted and certified in a state Biden narrowly won in 2020.

Both have said that Biden’s victory was fraudulent and Finchem, who was outside the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021 attack by pro-Trump supporters, has said he would not have certified Biden’s win if he had held the office then.

“I think that American democracy runs through the state of Arizona in 2022,” Mayes said in an interview with Reuters.

AG EMPOWERED TO STEP IN

Hamadeh downplayed the role an attorney general has in election certification in a statement to Reuters. Mayes is running a “desperate” campaign “to undermine my commitment to our country and our democratic processes,” he said.

But at a July rally attended by Trump, Hamadeh made comments strongly suggesting he viewed the position as pivotal in the election process.

“Arizona right now needs a warrior as attorney general. I will fight to secure our elections so when Donald Trump runs again and wins in 2024 everyone will know it’s legitimate.”

Dozens of Republicans who support Trump’s false claims of fraud have been nominated for local and state offices across the country this November, potentially placing them in charge of their state’s 2024 presidential elections. This has brought unprecedented attention to down-ballot races in battleground states like Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

Lawrence Douglas, an election law expert at Amherst College, said Arizona’s attorney general race has become one of the central contests in the fight against deniers of the 2020 presidential election result. Biden won Arizona by just 12,000 votes.

“What look like these relatively inconsequential races will have enormous consequences in terms of the 2024 presidential election,” Douglas said.

Tammy Patrick, a former federal compliance officer in the Maricopa County Elections Department – Arizona’s most populous county – said the attorney general is a vital position if either the governor or secretary of state attempt to certify a result that does not reflect the true vote total.

“If you have office holders who are trying to change the outcome of the election through the certification process, it’s incumbent on the attorney general to step in because they have sworn to uphold the laws of Arizona and the United States,” Patrick said.

Stefanie Lindquist, a law and political professor at Arizona State University, said the attorney general has the authority to sue to enforce the state’s election laws “through civil or criminal actions.”

(Reporting Tim Reid in Los Angeles, Editing by Ross Colvin and Alistair Bell)

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On Nov. 8, Louisiana voters go to the polls, just like in states across the country — only they’ll technically be voting in a primary election that includes candidates from all corners. Their votes may determine which candidates will occupy offices at all levels of the state’s government, or which candidates go on to a runoff.

Here’s a look at Louisiana’s unique system, unofficially called a “jungle primary,” and discussions around changing it:

WHAT IS A ‘JUNGLE PRIMARY’?

In what’s thought of as a traditional primary, political candidates only compete against other contenders within their own parties for nominations, to then advance to the general election. States hold their primaries on a variety of dates, with winners competing with one another on the November ballot.

But in a “jungle primary” or “majority vote primary,” all candidates regardless of party run against each other on the same ballot. If no one candidate tops 50% in that primary, the top two vote-getters advance to a head-to-head runoff, which can end up pitting two Republicans or two Democrats against each other.

Even though it’s called a primary, this happens on general Election Day.

HAS LOUISIANA ALWAYS DONE THIS?

For state, parish and municipal elections, Louisiana has used an open primary system since 1975. It was designed by then-Gov. Edwin Edwards, who had faced two tough Democratic primary rounds in the 1971 election before his general election run against a Republican opponent who hadn’t had the same primary challenges.

Open primaries were first used for Louisiana’s federal elections in 1978, when state lawmakers changed rules for U.S. House and Senate. It’s not used for Louisiana’s presidential primary.

HAVE THERE BEEN PROBLEMS?

Louisiana didn’t use open primaries from 2008 to 2010 because of legal challenges.

Initially, state lawmakers set up Louisiana’s open primaries in late September or early October, with general election dates conforming with November’s federal election date. Candidates who exceeded the 50% primary threshold were declared “elected,” rendering the November general election date unnecessary for those contests.

That timeline yielded a lawsuit by a group of Louisiana voters, who challenged the open primary calendar based on the argument that federal law requires U.S. House and Senate members to be elected on the centralized November election date.

In 1997, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the system violated federal law, since “over 80% of the contested congressional elections in Louisiana have ended as a matter of law with the open primary.” Subsequent to that decision, Louisiana moved the congressional primary date to November’s federal election day, pushing any needed runoffs to December.

There have been a few tweaks. Primary day was briefly moved to October in 2005. A year later, Gov. Kathleen Blanco signed a law that closed Louisiana’s 2008 congressional primaries, but state lawmakers voted two years later to bring back nonpartisan federal primaries.

The system can lead to immensely crowded primary ballots, like one for an open U.S. Senate seat in 2016 that boasted 24 candidates.

HAVE THERE BEEN RECENT EFFORTS TO CHANGE THIS?

Last year, Louisiana lawmakers considered reinstituting closed primaries; that idea was ultimately scrapped.

Republican Sen. Sharon Hewitt of Slidell said she brought up the notion in part because of concerns that Louisiana’s open primary often has the state electing members of Congress later than the rest of the country.

In competitive congressional races, particularly for open seats without an incumbent, races often are pushed into a December runoff — a month after nearly every other state has settled its seats. Some Louisiana Republicans including U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise argued that that system puts Louisiana’s newest congressional delegation members at a disadvantage in seniority, committee assignments and orientation sessions.

Other Republicans, including Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser, actively lobbied against the bill — limited to congressional elections but seen as a possible stepping stone to wider closed primaries for other types of elections — arguing that changing the system would shrink voter participation, confuse and frustrate voters and lead to more partisanship.

The feud raised questions about whether the bill could pass, and Hewitt said she would continue studying the issue.

DO OTHER STATES DO ANYTHING SIMILAR?

Two states, California and Washington, use a “top two” primary format, using a common ballot listing all candidates. California candidates list party affiliations, whereas Washington candidates list party “preferences,” according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

In both states, the top two vote-getters in each race advance to the general election. But unlike in Louisiana, no one can win the job outright in the primary even if they get more than half the vote.

Nebraska legislators are elected on a nonpartisan basis, running without party designation and on the same primary ballot, a system not dissimilar to local nonpartisan elections across the country, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

For the first time this year, Alaska elections were being held under a unique new system that scraps party primaries and instead holds an open primary in which all candidates for a given race appear on ballots, regardless of party affiliation, followed by ranked voting in the general election.

This system, in place for both state and federal elections, was narrowly approved by voters in 2020 and upheld by the state Supreme Court earlier this year.

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Meg Kinnard can be reached at http://twitter.com/MegKinnardAP

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Follow AP’s coverage of the 2022 midterm elections at: https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections

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NEW YORK (Reuters) – Donald Trump was scheduled to give a deposition on Wednesday in a defamation lawsuit brought in New York by writer E. Jean Carroll after the former president denied having raped her.

Carroll, a former Elle magazine columnist, sued Trump in Manhattan federal court in November 2019, five months after he denied raping her in the mid-1990s. In denying the allegations, Trump said at the time that Carroll was “not my type.”

Trump has accused Carroll of making up the original accusation and said the courts should have thrown out the lawsuit. Alina Habba, a lawyer for Trump, has called the case “entirely without merit.”

U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan last week denied Trump’s bid to delay the case, stating that subjecting Trump to a deposition in the case would not impose an “undue burden” on him. An Oct. 19 date was set for Trump’s deposition.

Trump had argued that the case should be put on hold while an appeals court decides whether he was acting in his official capacity as president when he called Carroll a liar. His lawyers have argued that Trump was shielded from Carroll’s lawsuit by a federal law providing immunity to government employees from defamation claims.

Carroll has said she also plans to sue Trump on Nov. 24 for battery and inflicting emotional distress.

On that date, a recently enacted New York state law gives victims of sexual misconduct a one-year window to sue over alleged sexual misconduct even if the statute of limitations has expired.

Carroll has accused Trump of raping her in late 1995 or early 1996 in a dressing room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan. Trump has accused her of concocting the rape claim to sell her book.

(Reporting by Luc Cohen; Editing by Noeleen Walder and Will Dunham)

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INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — A former Mike Pence aide is sidestepping previous support for tighter voting restrictions and doubts about the 2020 presidential vote as he tries to avoid turbulence in his campaign for what would typically be a little-noticed election win by a Republican seeking Indiana’s top elections office.

Since Diego Morales defeated Indiana’s current secretary of state for the GOP nomination in June, he’s given scant explanation for dropping his criticism of early and mail voting while Democrats criticize Morales as one of many Republican “election deniers” seeking to win state offices around the country

Indiana Democrats, who last won a statewide race a decade ago, see a chance to defeat Morales in the Nov. 8 election. They are highlighting that he twice left low-level secretary of state office jobs after being written up for poor job performance and questions over whether he’s overemphasized his military service.

Morales largely focuses his campaign on appearances at county Republican events and local festivals, brushing off criticism. He has not joined candidate forums with Democrat Destiny Wells and Libertarian Jeff Mauer and skipped a debate last week with them that was broadcast by public TV stations across Indiana.

Wells said Morales is “sowing seeds of fear and doubt” about elections and that the secretary of state should focus on improving Indiana’s troubles with low voter turnout.

“I think Diego is being very dishonest in where the secretary of state needs to take Indiana in election reforms,” Wells said. “We don’t need to make voting harder to make it more secure and he only wants to make it harder by reducing opportunities to vote.”

Ahead of Morales’ June Republican convention victory over current Secretary of State Holli Sullivan, he wrote an online column in which he called the 2020 election a “scam” while pointing to unfounded claims former President Donald Trump and his allies have made about other states. He called for voter restrictions that included cutting Indiana’s 28-day early voting period in half, eliminating several reasons why people can request mail-in ballots, requiring new voters to prove their U.S. citizenship when registering, and creating an “election task force” that would investigate “shenanigans.”

His single-page campaign website has included no mention of such plans and they don’t come up in his frequent social media posts of greeting voters.

When asked in an interview to explain his shifts, Morales didn’t give a direct answer.

“When I crisscross the 92 counties, I’ve been listening to all Hoosiers, including county clerks, and I have meetings with them and I believe the early voting is working and it will continue to be the same,” Morales told The Associated Press.

The Indiana secretary of state’s office oversees statewide policies for elections, which are run by elected county officials under laws enacted by the Republican-dominated Legislature. Winning the GOP nomination for the office has been tantamount to election victory as Republicans have won by double-digit percentages in six of the past seven times its been on the ballot.

Morales, 43, leans heavily into his life story of immigrating from Guatemala with his parents and sisters, finishing high school in the southern Indiana town of Sellersburg, then going to college at Indiana University Southeast and enlisting in the military before becoming a U.S. citizen.

Morales briefly held secretary of state office jobs in 2009 and 2011 until getting poor performance write-ups that the AP first reported about during his unsuccessful 2018 bid for an Indiana congressional seat. He returned to state government as an aide on Pence’s gubernatorial staff for four years until Pence left to become Trump’s vice president in 2017. Other Pence staffers have defended his work and Pence spoke at a Morales campaign fundraiser last week.

His campaign’s social media pages feature photos of Morales in a camouflage uniform and videos highlighting his service as an Army infantryman.

Military records released by the Morales campaign, however, show he underwent about 3-1/2 months of Army infantry training in 2007 and transferred to the Indiana National Guard. The records show Morales left the National Guard in 2013 without advancing beyond his initial rank of specialist or undergoing additional military education.

Morales said he was proud of his military service but declined to discuss it in any detail.

“My reasoning of joining is simply to give back,” he said. “I believe I signed a blank check to be ready, if needed, for this great country.”

Morales also declined to discuss why he never sought promotion or wasn’t activated when his National Guard unit served a deployment to Iraq in 2008.

“Feel free to call the National Guard or the U.S. Army or the Department of Defense. I’m sure they would walk you through all of that,” Morales said. “You can call them because they are the experts, they will tell you every single detail of this. So, the proof is there that I’m honorably discharged and I’m very proud of it.”

An Indiana National Guard spokesman, however, responded that the only information allowed for release under military regulations are records regarding “duty status, the character of his discharge, his term of service, his awards, his education and his job specialty.”

The Democratic candidate, Wells, a 38-year-old lawyer, released records of her Army service since 2004, including her promotion to her current Army Reserve rank of lieutenant colonel, time as an intelligence officer and active-duty deployment to Afghanistan in 2017.

Wells pivots discussion about military service back to what she calls an erosion of women’s rights with the statewide abortion ban approved by the Republican-dominated Legislature. Wells said that action resulted from the total control Republicans now have over state government and that more two-party balance is needed.

“I went to the ends of the Earth to protect the notion of democracy abroad, to protect women abroad in third world countries so that they have rights like ours secured,” Wells said. “But now I am at home and I am seeing my own rights taken away.”

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PHOENIX (AP) — A voter registration error caused up to 6,000 Arizona voters to get a mail ballot with only federal races, Secretary of State Katie Hobbs said Tuesday.

Hobbs, who is the Democratic nominee for governor, said in a statement that affected voters will receive the correct ballot shortly.

Hobbs has staked her gubernatorial campaign largely on her staunch defense of the 2020 election in the face of criticism from former President Donald Trump and his allies. Her Republican rival, former television news anchor Kari Lake, has spread Trump’s unsupported claims of fraud two years ago and has called on Hobbs to step aside from overseeing the midterms while she’s on the ballot.

When people register to vote in Arizona or update their registration, an election system queries driver’s license records to verify whether the person has proven their citizenship. Those who don’t have citizenship documentation on file are not eligible to vote in state elections and are registered as “federal only” voters.

Sophia Solis, a spokeswoman for Hobbs, said the driver’s license query failed to properly verify the citizenship for some people, leading them to to be improperly registered as federal only voters. She did not provide a breakdown of their party affiliation or describe the characteristics that led to problems.

Federal only voters have been a subject of political wrangling since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2013 that Arizona cannot require documentary proof of citizenship for people to vote in national elections. The state responded by creating two classes of voters — those who can vote in all races and those who can vote only in federal elections.

Hobbs said in her statement that the problem affected less than a quarter of 1 percent of voters. She said the database problem has been corrected.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. senators who scrutinize antitrust issues expressed “serious concerns” about grocery company Kroger Co’s plan to buy rival Albertsons Cos Inc, and said that they would hold a hearing on the $25 billion deal.

U.S. Senators Amy Klobuchar, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee antitrust panel, and Mike Lee, the panel’s top Republican, said that the hearing would take place in November.

(Reporting by Diane Bartz, Editing by Franklin Paul)

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OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt on Tuesday set a statewide election for March 7 for voters to decide whether to legalize the recreational use of marijuana, a question Democrats had hoped would be on the November ballot to help energize liberal voters.

Oklahomans for Sensible Marijuana Laws gathered enough signatures to qualify the question for a statewide vote and thought the proposal would be on the ballot in November. But because it took longer than usual to count the signatures and for courts to consider legal challenges, there wasn’t enough time to print the ballots ahead of the November election.

If approved by voters, the question would legalize the use of marijuana for any adult over the age of 21. Marijuana sales would be subjected to a 15% excise tax on top of the standard sales tax, and the revenue it generates would be used to help fund local municipalities, the court system, public schools, substance abuse treatment and the state’s general revenue fund.

The proposal also outlines a judicial process for people to seek expungement or dismissal of prior marijuana-related convictions.

Oklahoma already has one of the most robust medical marijuana programs in the country, with roughly 10% of the state’s residents having state-issued medical cards that allow them to purchase, grow and consume marijuana.

Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt said that while he supports the federal legalization of marijuana, he opposes the state question, saying the country’s patchwork of state laws on marijuana has become problematic.

It’s likely that a marijuana question on the ballot in November would have increased voter turnout in Oklahoma. About 892,000 voters cast ballots on the medical marijuana question in the June 2018 midterm primary election. By comparison, only about 528,000 voters cast ballots in the governor’s race in this year’s midterm primary election.

President Joe Biden’s recent announcement that he will pardon thousands of people for simple marijuana possession has shined a new spotlight on legalization efforts. This year, voters in Arkansas, Maryland, Missouri, North Dakota and South Dakota are considering measures on recreational marijuana.

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