—————- current events through a historical lens————————

Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt has announced that State Question 832 will be included on the June 16, 2026, ballot. This will be a difficult question for Oklahomans as, if passed, it will raise the state’s minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2029.

Proponents for the initiative argue that wages have fallen too far behind prices and its impossible to live off the federal minimum wage. Opponents say the increase will send prices sky high and crush small businesses and farmers. Instead of arguing which view is correct, historically speaking, I am more interested in the procedure.

The Oklahoma Legislature has kept the minimum wage at the federal level since 2009, and seems content for it to remain that way. This hike can only happen if the people of Oklahoma vote for it. While giving the people a direct vote on these matters seems to live up to our democratic values, its actually in direct opposition to what our Founders envisioned.

It is important to understand today that while we believe in democratic principles, we are in fact a republic not a democracy. When the Founders wrote the Constitution, they put in place protections for the people against a strong federal government. But they also put into place protections for the government against the people. This is most evident in the original Constitution where “the people” only elect members of the House of Representatives.

This was the one area where democracy came into play. We elect our representatives. Originally, however, senators were chosen by state legislatures. And presidents today are still elected by the Electoral College. Both were done to separate the people from these offices.

While the government can become tyrannical, so too could the people. The Founders recognized that. In possibly the most famous of the Federalists’ Papers, Number 10, James Madison argued that a majority of the population can become tyrannical, and that in a pure democracy, factions could easily dominate and oppress minorities.

Simply for the sake of argument, let’s say that raising the minimum wage to $15 will wreck the economy. However, if the majority of Oklahomans vote for the raise for their own personal gain, is not the majority rule harmful for the rest of Oklahoma? Is that not tyrannical?

Alexander Hamilton shared Madison’s view. In Federalist Paper Number 71, Hamilton worried that the people too often voted with passion instead of reason. At their core, republics were founded because elected leaders are often better informed than the masses. It was—and is—the elected leaders’ duty to resist popular opinion if the popular opinion would or could do harm to the nation and/or state.

Two years before the Declaration of Independence, the great British statesman Edmund Burke said, “Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgement; and he betrays you instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.”

Part of democracy is voting for those that we have confidence in to make decisions for us because we trust them

See FINCK, page A5 enough to know what’s best for all of their constituency, not for individual causes. When we stop trusting them then it’s time to vote in someone else.

If we accept the Founders and their concept of republicanism, then we must place our trust in those we chose to represent us. If they chose not to raise the minimum wage, it is for good reason. Elected leaders are supposed to see the proverbial big picture and not vote for self-interests. If republicanism seems like blind faith, it’s because it is. This is why voting must be taken seriously. It is our one chance to have a say in our government.

Clearly not everyone has agreed with Madison, Hamilton or Burke. In the 1890s, a new movement known as Progressives hit the scene. Progressives grew out of the farmers’ movements of the late 1800s, and thrived in the Plains states, including what would become Oklahoma.

At the time, the two major parties of Democrats and Republicans did very little if anything to help the common people. They believed in strict laissezfaire when it came to the economy. They left it with Scottish economist and philosopher Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” and believed if they got involved, they might break it. Struggling farmers started to believe that since the majority of the population farmed, maybe the government ought to do things to help them.

The Populist Party formed from these ideas in 1892 and developed a series of requests that at the time seemed radical and socialist, yet over time almost all of them became law. They called for things like the direct election of senators and an income tax, both of which happened in 1913; women’s suffrage, which happened in 1919; and prohibition, which happened in 1920.

But not everything was eventually made law. Populists’ most famous request was to add silver to the gold standard. And their most radical measure was the nationalization of the railroads. One last measure called for the referendum, a general vote by the electorate on a specific question, which allowed for the people to add bills directly to the ballot. The idea behind referendums is that if the government would not pass measures to help voters, they would pass them themselves. While this measure never made it on the national level, it did make it into the constitutions of several Populist states.

While Oklahoma is one of the most conservative states today, when it was granted statehood in 1907, it was one of the most liberal and dominated by Populists. The Oklahoma Constitution reads like a Populists’ handbook meaning referendums are part of its makeup. Today only 15 other states have similar laws; the rest still rely solely on representative democracy. Over the years there have been legal challenges to the referendum and even suggestions of Constitutional amendments to change this law in Oklahoma, but so far each has failed. Whether one supports referendums comes down to each individual’s views of democracy or maybe how much one trusts the people to govern. However, in this case, it will probably come down to how many are making minimum wage.

James Finck is a professor of American history at the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma. He can be reached at HistoricallySpeak-ing1776@ gmail.com.