The Oklahoma Gazette, a liberal free newspaper, published a point/counterpoint on the Oklahoma 3’s case this week. The point is authored by Attorney General Drew Edmondson, with a counterpoint by Law Professor Andrew Spiropoulos.

Edmondson repeats many of the already-discredited excuses he has made over the past few months for his prosecution. His continued efforts to hide behind the grand jury—despite having now thrown out its indictment and filed one of his own—were dealt with fully and humorously in Spiropoulos’s counterpoint.

“Anyone who tells you that the grand jury, not the AG, is responsible for the indictment is insulting your intelligence,” Spiropoulos writes. “Anyone who has watched Law & Order knows that grand jurors will indict a ham sandwich if that’s what the prosecutor wants them to do.”

Edmondson claims that the Oklahoma 3 contend that the law “somehow doesn’t apply to them,” a claim no one has made. Edmondson goes on to blame the Oklahoma 3 for silencing the taxpayers who legally signed the petition, as if they should be held responsible for the irrational rulings of the Supreme Court—which came after the fact and contradicted the advice they were given by the State Election Board.

In Spiropoulos’s defense of the Oklahoma 3, he writes:

It is true that some solicitors were not originally from Oklahoma. The problem here is that the defendants—experienced in running these campaigns—claim that they contacted state authorities and asked how these people could become state residents. They were told, and, more importantly, the law at the time arguably held, that all the new residents needed to show was an intent to be an Oklahoma resident.

Now, the Oklahoma Supreme Court has decided much more is required for a circulator to establish state residency—but that decision was made in the case rejecting the defendants’ TABOR petition (which will effectively deter the use of these circulators in the future, making this prosecution unnecessary). In other words, the defendants are being prosecuted for violating a law that was not clarified until after they acted—so how could they have been violating the law “knowingly” and “willfully” when no one was really sure what the law was? In fact, we’re still not sure what the law means—it’s being challenged in federal court.

Read Edmondson’s “Point”

Read Spiropoulos’s “Counterpoint”