In 2024, activists launched an initiative petition effort to impose a California-style election system in Oklahoma. Under the proposed system, voters’ November choices could have been reduced to two politicians from the same political party.

State Question 836 backers needed 172,993 signatures from qualified Oklahoma voters to place the proposal on the ballot. They fell well short of that number, according to the office of the Secretary of State, which found that only 142,567 submitted signatures were valid under state law.

Now, activists are urging the Oklahoma Supreme Court to allow the measure to be placed before voters anyway, arguing that many signatures should be counted as valid regardless of the Secretary of State’s findings.

When the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs (OCPA) asked the court for permission to file a brief defending Oklahoma’s initiative-petition security measures, several activists opposed that request, including Labor Commissioner Leslie Osborn.

Osborn once helped direct an organization that produced a coloring book touting the “Six Spectrums of Sexuality.” During her time in statewide office, Osborn was a member of, and one of six officers on, the board of directors for Honestly, an Oklahoma City organization focused on “youth sexual health.”

The organization advised kids to “own your sex life.”

Among other things, the organization released the “Honestly Youth Sexual Health in Color Coloring Book,” which asked users to give “five reasons why sexual health should be discussed with young people.”

One page of the coloring book included images of an individual and the label, “Valid + Nonbinary 100% Me.” Another page asked users to designate their place on the “Six Spectrums of Sexuality.” Another page included images of various forms of contraception, including condoms.

On Honestly’s website, a page of “LGBTQUI resources” directed youth to the Adolescent Medicine Roy G. Biv Program at OU Children’s Hospital and to Planned Parenthood Great Plains (PPGP), an affiliate of the nation’s largest abortion provider.

The Roy G. Biv Program provided puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to underage children, along with some sex-change surgeries and referrals for other sex-change procedures, until lawmakers voted to bar OU Children’s Hospital from receiving government funds if the hospital continued those activities.

Osborn publicly derided lawmakers’ efforts to require that patients be at least 18 before undergoing sex-change procedures. In a public meeting, a recording of which was posted online, Osborn called for voters to defeat lawmakers who support such restrictions, along with other conservative policy goals.

“Have you pulled up the voting records of your state rep and senator? Are they the ones running anti-trans bills, gay-bashing bills, abortion bills, gun bills? If that’s what you want, great. That’s not what I want out of government,” Osborn said. “Are they the ones always voting for a tax cut? We have to get to the point where we educate ourselves and start putting people in that have the same priorities we do, unless we want to stay stagnantly, exactly where we are.”

Osborn has repeatedly objected to efforts to cut Oklahoma’s personal-income tax, even during times of massive surplus. In a column published in The Oklahoman, Osborn claimed that cutting taxes would “put our state into economic peril.”

Osborn also backed a recent state question, which was decisively rejected by Oklahoma voters, that would have more than doubled Oklahoma’s minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 an hour by 2029 and then continued increasing the mandate every year based on the cost-of-living in places like New York City and Chicago.

Oklahoma law requires that initiative petitions include several data points from those who sign the petition: the individual’s name, address, county of residence, date of birth, and registered-voter status.

In the organization’s application to file a brief, the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs asked to provide arguments defending the constitutional validity of Oklahoma’s initiative petition protections.

“This court has long recognized that statutory provisions essential to guard against fraud in the initiative-petition process are indispensable, and the brief will demonstrate that not only are four or more data point matches reasonable, but requiring five matching data points is a constitutionally sound safeguard designed to prevent fraud and deception while preserving the people’s right to legislative by initiative,” the OCPA application stated.

Under State Question 836, all Oklahoma candidates—Democrats, Republicans, and independents—would have been placed on a single ballot with all voters participating. The two candidates receiving the most votes would then proceed to the November general election, even if they are both members of the same political party.

That would largely mirror California elections, where voters’ November choices are often limited to two members of the same party, and even statewide races have involved only two Democratic candidates.

That scenario would have played out in prior Oklahoma elections had SQ 836 been in place. In fact, Oklahoma voters’ choices would have been limited to two Democratic candidates in nearly every open-seat governor’s race won by a Republican from the 1960s to today, including the 2018 race.

Nearly all Republican members of the Oklahoma Legislature opposed SQ 836, as did members of the state’s congressional delegation and statewide officeholders.

State Question 836’s backers included out-of-state individuals who previously worked in the presidential campaign of a Marxist candidate.