On May 24, Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt signed SB 1027. It says that statewide initiative petitions face a limit of how many signatures may come from any particular county. No more than 11.5% of the last gubernatorial vote inside Oklahoma and Tulsa Counties will count.

Under several Ninth Circuit precedents, the bill would be unconstitutional, but Oklahoma is in the Tenth Circuit. The Tenth Circuit has never had a case on county distribution requirements for initiatives.

The Utah Supreme Court struck down a somewhat similar law in 2002 in Gallivan v Walker, but that is not binding, although it should be influential.

The new law also requires circulators to be registered Oklahoma voters. A past Oklahoma identical provision has already been held unconstitutional. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states can’t require circulators to be registered voters, and the Tenth Circuit ruled that Oklahoma can’t ban out-of-state circulators.

On April 15, Oakland, California, held a special election for Mayor, using ranked choice voting. Ten candidates appeared on the ballot. Here are the results.

One of the ten candidates, Eric Simpson, was the candidate of the Socialist Workers Party. He placed seventh.

Texas Senate Bill 1209 would move the runoff primary from the 4th Tuesday in May to the 2nd Tuesday in May. If it passes, it would automatically move the independent candidate petition deadline from June 25 to June 11. On May 22 it passed the House Elections Committee. It had already passed the Senate. Thanks to Jim Riley for this news.