Here are a few quick, sad statistics. Last November, fewer than three in 10 eligible Oklahoma voters went to the polls. Nationally, Oklahoma ranked at the bottom rungs in voter registration and voter turnout as well as election competitiveness. In close to two-thirds of the state, the winner for the state House legislative seat had already been decided beforehand because only one candidate filed for office or because the seat was decided in the primary.

It gets worse. Even in seats that were contested such as the main Senatorial races, the choices between the two candidates were narrow. Most Democrats ran on a platform that was essentially “Republican lite.” They failed to offer real alternatives on policies such as national security and the environment and failed to articulate a meaningful program to address rising economic inequality.

The lack of real choices at the polls and the state’s chronically low voter turnout has enabled extreme right-wingers, who are well funded and have an enthusiastic base behind them, to monopolize political power even at a time when their policies have compounded many of the state’s pressing social problems and even when many of the positions they have taken, such as denial of global warming, have been proven to be scientifically invalid.

These are all symptoms of that “broken democracy” Carter warned about.

How do we address the crisis? There are currently a number of measures being proposed in the state Legislature. Senate Bill 313, which allows for online voter registration, could make it easier to vote. House Bill 2181, which lowers the threshold for the number of signatures needed to gain recognition for a political party, could let new voices enter the public square to compete with the Democrats and the Republicans. These bills would be a good starting point.

But let’s not kid ourselves. Neither modernized voter registration nor fair ballot access can address the deeper causes of voter alienation. Neither bill will bring significant change to Oklahoma’s political landscape.

Most people do not vote because they do not believe they have anything to gain by doing so. This feeling stems in part from the takeover of the political system by big money. Because of the reliance on campaign donations in the age of Citizen’s United, neither major political party talks directly to working class people, except to exploit underlying racist sentiments or play off cultural divisions in society.

To reinvigorate our democratic culture, the Legislature’s small reforms will not be enough. A broad social transformation is necessary.

Jeremy Kuzmarov is J.P. Walker assistant professor of history at the University of Tulsa and author of Modernizing Repression: Police Training and Nation Building in the American Century (Massachusetts, 2009).