How to Use the 2008 Oklahoma Voters' Guide

It’s here to help you.

The 2008 Oklahoma Voters’ Guide is nonpartisan, as is Oklahoma Family Policy Council. While OFPC cares deeply about many public-policy issues, we cooperate with all Oklahomans of goodwill—whether Democrats, Independents, or Republicans—to achieve common goals important to a majority of Oklahomans. Nothing in the Oklahoma Voters’ Guide should be construed as our endorsement of any candidate or political party, or as an attempt to influence the outcome of an electoral contest.

What’s inside?

All federal offices for 2008 are covered, as are the four state questions and the state House and state Senate races. For local races, you’ll have to rely on others. Also, we didn’t send a questionnaire to the appellate judges on the judicial retention ballot. Why? Oklahoma’s judges uniformly claim they are prohibited by the Oklahoma Code of Judicial Conduct from responding to issue-oriented surveys. A U.S. Supreme Court opinion, we believe, accords Oklahoma’s judges more leeway than they think they have, but it will take litigation to resolve.

Easy to use.

To begin, find the race(s) you want to research by clicking on Electoral Races (see top of this page). Then, use Find Your Districts to determine your districts, or call your County Election Board (see the government pages of your phone book) and provide them your home address. Once you know your district(s), you can view your candidates' responses to our questionnaire. Additional comments from specific candidates (if marked by an asterisk*) can also be viewed (see Full Candidate List and Submitted Questionnaires). In PDF format, voters can view a candidate’s entire signed questionnaire and any comments or clarifications they may have made about specific questions. To view candidate questionnaires, Adobe Reader must be installed on your computer. Click the link provided to download and install the free Adobe Reader 8.0 software if you don't have it already.

Often, you will notice, candidates failed to answer our questionnaire (which they received once by regular mail and a second time by Certified Mail) and ignored OFPC’s repeated follow-up attempts by phone or e-mail to encourage their participation. For these unresponsive candidates, we encourage voters to question candidates directly; after all, they want to work for you!

In many cases, candidates failed to answer our questionnaire (which they received twice at their address-of-record; once by Certified Mail) and ignored OFPC's repeated follow-up attempts to encourage their participation. For these unresponsive candidates, we have provided home or office telephone numbers when available. We encourage voters to phone and question these candidates directly. After all, they seek your vote; they want to work for you — the taxpayers — and collect a salary paid by you. So, ask questions; this is a job interview!

Download the PDF.

To download the entire 2008 Oklahoma Voters’ Guide to your computer, simply click on the above PDF file link. Note: this is a very large 11 MB file; so please allow adequate time for the file to completely load before attempting to view it.

OFPC strongly recommends that you view the voters' guide entirely online on the computer screen or else online as a PDF file. You may increase the magnification size of the various pages in the downloaded PDF file if that is a benefit to you. (You may also print as many or as few pages as you wish, but the print quality will be too small on many of the pages to be legible.) Viewing the voters' guide online or as a PDF file is simply your best viewing option.

Write down your choices.

Print the My Choices page. Once you have made your electoral choices, fill it out and take it with you to your polling place on Election Day. What could be easier?

Spread the word!

After you’re finished, please help spread the word in person and widely via e-mail lists to others you know about the existence of the Oklahoma Voters’ Guide. Surely, this resource will benefit other voters in your family, workplace, church, and community.

Please help OFPC to maximize this Web-site’s availablity to others because informed voters will make the best voters for Oklahoma on November 4th!