The Texas petition deadline for new parties is May 24. Only one party submitted a petition, the Green Party. The party submitted 90,000 signatures to meet a requirement of 43,991. See this story.

This is only the second time that the Texas Green Party has submitted enough signatures to qualify for the ballot. The first time was in 2000, and the party polled enough votes in 2000 so that it was automatically on the ballot as well in 2002. Parties in Texas must poll either 5% for any statewide race, or 2% for Governor. Parties that get 2% for Governor enjoy qualified status for the next four years, but parties that get 5% for any statewide race only gets qualified status for the next two years.

George Phillies, a candidate for national chair of the Libertarian Party, appears in this podcast, publicizing California’s Proposition 14 and also explaining how residents of any state are free to help make telephone calls to California voters. Independent Political Report has the podcast here.

Anyone who lives anywhere is free to contact Beau Cain, manager of the California Libertarian Party office, to participate, according to the podcast. Contact Beau at 877-884-1776.

The forces in favor of Proposition 14 have raised $4,700,000. They are running thousands of radio ads telling voters that “special interests” are opposed to Proposition 14. One hopes, radio listeners who have heard to pro-Proposition 14 ad innumerable times will wonder who is paying for the ads if the “special interests” are against Prop. 14.

On May 22, Hawaii held a special election to fill the vacant U.S. House seat, 1st district. Hawaii special elections do not allow parties to nominate candidates. Instead, anyone runs on a single ballot by collecting 25 valid signatures. Five Democrats, five Republicans, and four independents, ran. The leading Republican, Charles Djou, was elected with 39.4% of the vote. There is no provision for a run-off. See the returns here.

The voters cast 59% of their votes for one or another Democrat, but the Democratic vote was splintered. Democrats might have worked harder to narrow the field of Democrats, but they presume that they will regain this seat in November 2010 anyway, and the balance in the House right now is not terribly close. If this had been a Senate race, the Democratic Party would have acted differently.

This is the first time a Republican has been elected to Congress from Hawaii in many decades.