It finally hit me. I was walking the dog with my two youngest. My 17-year-old regaled us with tales from her classes at the local community college. My 9-year-old declared she would learn to speak Japanese, like her sister, and Italian.

Bugsy and I just listened. And then it happened.

What hit me? A noticeable feeling of hope, even confidence. Now, I thought, I’ll get to be in my children’s future.

Earlier that afternoon Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson dismissed charges of “conspiracy to defraud the state” against the Oklahoma Three: Rick Carpenter, a Tulsa political activist; Susan Johnson, head of National Voter Outreach, one of the country’s top petition management firms; and yours truly.

The charge carried a maximum penalty of ten years in prison and a $25,000 fine.

The Attorney General alleged that we willfully conspired to hire non-residents, non-Oklahomans, to circulate petitions on two ballot measures: One, the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, a measure to cap state spending; the other, a property rights measure called Protect Our Homes. Edmondson launched a media campaign, writing an op-ed and visiting a TV talk show to expound on how guilty we were.

We were innocent. Those actually managing the petition effort on the ground consulted with state officials and were informed that it was indeed lawful for people to move to Oklahoma to work on the petition drive.

The opinions of the regular enforcers of the law didn’t count, though. The state supreme court kept the Taxpayer Bill of Rights initiative off the ballot, ruling that anyone not intending to “permanently” reside in Oklahoma was not a resident. The court also tossed out the petitions of circulators whose residency status was challenged without ever affording those circulators an opportunity to defend themselves.

One thing was certain: more than 15 percent of Oklahoma voters had very willfully signed to put the issue to a vote . . . a vote they were denied.

That wasn’t enough, however. The issue could always come back via a new petition drive. So could other issues. Soon, the Attorney General decided to go a step further, indicting the three of us on criminal charges. No one was charged as a non-resident circulator. Instead, the state took a swipe at

    • one local political activist,
    • the head of a major petition company that had worked on numerous conservative and libertarian issues, and
    • me, an advocate for many national campaigns for term limits, property rights, spending restraint, and the like.

The prosecution was roundly blasted, right and left, by Steve Forbes and Ralph Nader, by the Wall Street Journal, Pulitzer prize-winning columnist Paul Greenberg and Tecumseh Countywide News in central Oklahoma. Most importantly, we were blessed with faith and trust that we would prevail in court, in the end . . . if we could afford to defend our rights for what might have been many years. We were under indictment for a year and four months, paid many legal bills, and still not even a preliminary hearing had been completed.

But just before Christmas, the federal Tenth Circuit struck down Oklahoma’s ban on non-residents circulating petitions, ruling the law an unconstitutional impediment to citizen petitioning. Not only did we not break the law, it wasn’t a law at all.

In the last year, three federal circuits have overturned state residency restrictions, each time by unanimous panels.

Last Wednesday, Edmondson’s request for a rehearing by the Tenth Circuit was denied. On Thursday, he decided not to appeal the Tenth Circuit decision to the U.S. Supreme Court after all — and not to prosecute our case.

Case dismissed. We’ve won a victory. The Oklahoma Three are free.

But the battle for citizen control of government, for the right to speak out, to petition one’s government, that struggle is far from over. Free political speech cannot be sustained when regular citizens, who dare to take an active part in politics, face threats of prison or financial destruction, or both.

This prosecution had a chilling effect on petition activity in Oklahoma. And sadly, we of the Oklahoma Three are far from alone. Continued...