On May 19, California held a special election to fill the vacant State Senate seat in the 26th district. The results: Democratic Assemblyman Curren Price 70.44%; Republican Nachum Shifren 21.12%; Peace & Freedom member Cindy Varela Henderson 8.43%.

Henderson’s showing is the best Peace & Freedom Party showing in a California legislative race (excluding races with only a single major party candidate) since 1978, when PFP polled 9.90% in a Santa Cruz Assembly race.

Henderson is a telephone technician. See her campaign website here. The 26th district includes part of Hollywood, as well as Baldwin Hills, Silver Lake, Culver City, and other parts of Los Angeles County.

On May 19, the Oklahoma legislature passed SB 800, which will make it easier to qualify initiatives in the future. The bill provides that when a group decides to start collecting signatures for a proposed initiative, the Secretary of State will notify the public of the proposed initiative, and its proposed ballot title. If anyone challenges either the constitutionality of the initiative, or the title, the State Supreme Court will adjudicate the dispute. All this happens before the initiative starts to circulate.

Assuming the bill is signed into law, this will end the risk (under the current system) that proponents of an initiative do all the work of getting the signatures, and then face the uncertainty that their initiative’s title will be deemed improper, or that the initiative will be held to violate the single subject rule or be otherwise unconstitutional.

Another bill to ease initiative qualification, HB 2246, has passed the conference committee and the House. The Senate will probably vote on it by May 21. It increases the amount of time to collect signatures for an initiative from 90 days to one year.

On May 15, California Secretary of State Debra Bowen released updated voter registration data for the special statewide election of May 19. Compared to the last registration tally of March 20, these parties gained a slightly larger share of the registration: Democratic, American Independent, Libertarian, and Reform. Also the percentage of independents increased. The Reform Party is not ballot-qualified in California but the state keeps track of its registration tally. Ballot-qualified parties that slipped slightly in percentage of registered voters since the last tally are Republican, Green, and Peace & Freedom.