In Texas, nomination for a district office requires the lesser of 500 or 5% of the gubernatorial vote in the district. For US Congress, the 5% would typically be around 7 or 8,000, with a few outliers, especially on the low side.

The 500 value was approved in American Party of Texas v White, so the legislature would be unlikely to change it, even though it is now equivalent to about 0.35%.

But the same standards are applied to other district offices. There are 150 Texas House districts (vs. 32 congressional districts), which would mean that 5% would typically be around 1500. There may be a few districts that require 5% (but this would be less than 500). At the time the law was written, there may have been no districts where the cap of 500 would have been reached.

For example, let’s say you decided 5% of voters was OK. But then you decide to use registered voters. Someone points out that a lot of registrations might be by people who have moved, died, don’t care about politics, etc. So you adjust the figure to 3%. But depending on interest, better quality registrations, that might be 4% or 6% of voters. And registration can be almost as volatile as turnout.

We will need just over 85,000 valid signitures in a little over 3 years to make the 2012 elections.

Since we can’t start collecting signatures until January of the election year and have to turn them in by the deadline approximately 6 months later, working 8 hours a day, that comes to about 200 signaturs an hour. That’s why you don’t see any Libertarians on the ballot in Georgia for US house seats. This is criminal!

BROWN V. BD OF ED 1954.

ANY ballot access lawyers with ANY brains – to overrule a mere 40 years of JUNK ballot access cases starting with Williams v. Rhodes ???

The Supremes do periodically overrule their earlier JUNK cases that are obviously defective.