Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating this week signed an executive order placing an initiative to ban cockfighting on the ballot for the Nov. 5 general election.
Oklahoma, Louisiana and New Mexico are the only states left where cockfighting is legal.
Keating endorses the cockfighting ban saying,
Cockfighting is cruel, it promotes illegal gambling and it is simply embarrassing to Oklahoma to be seen as one of only a tiny handful of locations outside of the third world where this activity is legal. I will vote yes for State Question 687, and I encourage all Oklahomans to do the same.
Keating’s act resolves a long-fought battle by anti-cockfighting forces that began back in 2000 when they collected 100,000 signatures in the Fall of 1999 to place the initiative on the November 2000 ballot. Signatures on that ballot were challenged in court by cockfighting supporters, however, which led to the two-year delay in the initiative being added to the ballot.
Also appearing on the 2002 ballot is an another initiative that was a reaction to the cockfighting initiative. State Question 698 would, if passed, require initiative backers to obtain signatures from registered voters equal to 15 percent of the total number of voters in the previous election. Currently, the requirement is only 8 percent.
Source:
Cockfighting issue on ballot. John Greiner, The Oklahoman, August 20, 2002.