On June 9, the Texas Secretary of State determined that the Green Party petition this year had enough valid signatures, and the party will be on the 2010 ballot. The party is very likely to poll 5% of the vote for State Comptroller this year, because there is no Democratic nominee for that office this year. That will mean the Texas Greens will also be on in 2012.
Ballot Access News
Edited By Richard Winger
There was an interesting article in the Dallas Morning News about the petition drive last week.
Excellent Green Party news.
Thank you.
Can the Green Party in Texas still add candidates?
The Green Party is subject to a unique Texas law which says that if a party that isn’t on yet wants to get on the ballot, it must identify someone who wants the party’s nomination by the first week in January. The party convention is free to choose anyone to run for the offices that were mentioned in January. But if no one was listed as running for any particular office in January, the party can’t run anyone for that office. Just another repressive Texas election law.
While I am a supporter of minor parties here in Texas I am very interested in the Sec of State’s validation of petition signatures. What percentage of all were noted as valid and specifically what percentage of the ‘electronically signed’ petitions signatures were accepted? If anyone knows where that info may be found thank you for advising.
In the end, I don’t think the party turned in any electronic signatures. There was no need. Not only did the party submit more than twice the legal requirement, the party double-checked the validity of almost half the signatures.
Texas uses a random sample to determine the validity of petitions to recognize a new party, so it doesn’t usually take very long to validate a petition.
I just found out the Green Party did turn in 300 electronic signatures. I don’t know yet what the state did with them.
Free & Equal Inc. submitted all 91,214 petitions for ballot access for the Texas Green Party and simply providing the CD of 52,068 petitions we had time to verify before the deadline in an effort to help speed up the approval process for ballot access. Approximately 300 electronic signatures were submitted. http:www.freeandequalinc.com
I’m in the process of finding out what the state did with the 300 electronic signatures.
#4 Parties do not appear on the ballot. Candidates nominated by political parties appear on the ballot.
Richard Winger fails to comprehend the paradigm used for nominations in Texas. Voters are limited to participate in the nomination of one candidate per office. And they must choose which party’s nominating activities they wish to participate in.
In Texas, larger parties use primaries to nominate their candidates, while smaller parties use conventions to nominate their candidates. Conventions are multi-tiered, beginning with precinct conventions, followed by county and district conventions, and finally the state convention.
Conventions are simply an alternative structure to primaries, and so candidates who seek the nomination of a smaller party must file the same as if they were seeking the nomination of a larger party in a primary.
This is not significantly different than the system used in California (until 2011), except that in California all parties are (were) required to nominate by partisan primary.
Texas does not maintain records of party allegiance as is done in California. So voters may choose which party’s nomination activities they wish to participate in each election year.
The precinct conventions for small parties are held the week after the general primary election. So a voter who was choosing whether to vote in the Democratic or Republican primary, or participate in the Libertarian or Green Party conventions would reasonably consult the list of candidates seeking the nominations of the various parties before choosing his party. Since the primaries and precinct conventions are in early March, the filing deadline is in early January.
The county and district conventions are also in March, so the nominations for the Green and Libertarian parties for all but statewide offices were made at that time.
Texas restricts replacement of candidates nominated by political parties, generally to those who have died; have a catastrophic illness; or were declared ineligible. Otherwise, candidates may withdraw, but they may not be replaced. California is even more restrictive, limiting replacement of nominated candidates to those who have died.
If a candidate for nomination of a party, that nominates by primary, withdraws immediately before the filing deadline, then the filing deadline can be extended a few days. But filing has to be finalized before ballots can be printed and absentee ballots can be sent out.
For parties that nominate by convention, the filing deadline can be extended essentially up until the time of the convention that nominates for that office. That is the procedure which Richard Winger alluded to. It is dependent on the candidate withdrawing, dieing, or being declared ineligible. (Election Code Section 181.033(b)).
Texas uses the same nominating procedure for parties that have already qualified to have its candidates placed on the ballot, such as Libertarian Party, as they do for parties that seek to qualify. In 2010, the Constitution, Green, Reform, and Socialist parties filed there intent to qualify/nominate candidates.
In California, for example, parties must prove in advance that they have enough support (voters declaring their intent to affiliate with the party at the next primary). In Texas, parties are permitted to demonstrate their support during the actual nomination process. So instead of saying that you intend to vote in the Putative Party’s primary as happens in California; in Texas you simply show up at the precinct convention for the Putative Party and add your name to the register of participants. If there is enough participation, the nominations made by the various conventions will appear on the general election ballot.
Texas also permits parties attempting to qualify to supplement their list of precinct convention attendees with petition signatures. In essence, signers represent voters who were unable to attend the precinct convention in person. This is why voters who participated in the nomination activities of other parties may not sign the petition of the Green Party.
Jim Riley fails to comprehend how ridiculous it is for Texas to expect newly-formed parties to submit a list of potential nominees in January of an election year. The Republican Party was formed on July 6, 1854, and it went on to win a plurality in the U.S. House of Representatives later that year. Under Texas law, a party formed that late in the year couldn’t appear on the ballot that year.
The original purpose of the Texas ballot access law was to destroy Parti La Raza Unita, a predominately Chicano and predominately south Texas party which was growing in influence because of both the growing Hispanic population and that it served as the “none of the above” vote against the Republicrats (who were even more alike then than now). Since then only four attempts made it to the ballot: Greens in 2000, Kinky Freedman and Carole Strayhorn (both as independent individuals) in 2008, and now the Greens again in 2010.
It is curious, with all the objections to outside help for Greens by the corporate media, they didn’t complain when the Grace Corp. gave a million dollars to get the Libertarians on the ballot.
The “GOP plot” lie is a rehash of Karl Rove’s “blame the Greens” tactic to cover the massive corruption in Florida 2000 – illegal “butterfly” ballots which had Jews voting extensively for Pat Buchanan, massive disenfranchisement of blacks on false “felon” allegations, not counting overseas military votes, outside of Florida secretly programmed electronic voting machines which gave Gore a minus total in a few places, and finally the Supreme Court stopping the recount when Gore was gaining votes over Bush.
To conceal this, the Republicans blamed Nader even though 30% of his voters said they would have not voted at all for president if he were not on the ballot, half were first-time voters, and the Democrats actually believed this. Thus the Republicans are trying it again. Rove is still in Texas.
It is hardly likely that Greens, with an international platform of grassroots democracy, economic justice, environmental responsibility, and nonviolence, would attract the support of parties favoring trickle-down plutocracy, class-struggle exploitation, “drill baby drill”, and permanent war.
Even Democrats should note that they have no candidate for Comptroller of Public Accounts (who destroyed the recent efficient appliances bonus by giving it to a private corporation to run instead of doing it themselves as they are paid for). Neither did they bother filing for State Board of Education, District 9, and Greens did. Even if the Democrats win all their SBOE races, it would still leave the current “flat earth” Board in 8-7 control – unless they will make coalition and support the Green for the balance vote and make it 8-7 on behalf of reason.
Most observers are trying to decide if Texas is a farce or a tragedy, particularly in school policy.
#11 Texas congressional elections for the 35th Congress were on August 6, 1855. There was plenty of time for them to organize nominating activities.
Most of the candidates who you claim as “Republicans” didn’t run as “Republicans”. And of the roughly 1/3 of representatives elected in 1855, none were Republicans and none were Whigs.
Texas does not expect political parties to submit lists of potential candidates. It expects persons who want to seek the nomination of a political party to file with the appropriate party officials.
The Green Party is not a new party. It is a party that was not qualified to have the candidates nominated in its conventions placed on the general election ballot. I am sure it had some number of people attend its precinct conventions.
Another important new party was Theodore Roosevelt’s Progressive Party, formed in the summer of 1912. It got its presidential candidate, and hundreds of congressional candidates, on ballots in almost all states in 1912, including Texas. But under the current Texas law, the Progressive Party could not have been on in Texas in 1912.
The United States formally criticized Armenia when Armenia announced a new election law (I think in 2000) that required parties to qualify six months before any election, but Texas requires it to have been in existence eleven months before an election. No other state has such a law. For once in your life, Jim, admit that Texas has crummy election laws.
Christina Tobin Says:
June 9th, 2010 at 6:52 pm
I’m in the process of finding out what the state did with the 300 electronic signatures.
Christina, when known…please post the Sec of State’s action on the 300 electronic signatures. Thanks.
#14 For a party to make nominations it has to be in existence at the time party nominations are made. In Texas, party nominations are made in March. The timing is the problem, not the method.
The Progressive Party was not on the presidential ballot in California in 1912, thanks to the activities of its governor.
#16, it doesn’t follow logically that just because the Democratic and Republican Parties choose to nominate in March, that the state should require all parties to nominate in March. This is especially true in a state (like Texas) in which newly qualifying parties always nominate by convention instead of primary. Most states allow newly-qualifying parties to nominate after the major parties nominate.
And, if that U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the corporate donation case is any indication, the Greens might prevail. If not, Texas law bars contributions to parties and candidates from corporations.
Those 90,000 signatures will be history if this Temporary Restraining Order is any indication…
It’s awfully hard for small parties to get anything close to 44,000 people to show up to their precinct conventions, especially in a state where there is no registration by party. It makes it much harder for parties to identify their potential supporters and get them to show up. Furthermore, voters have to be convinced to give up participating in the Democratic and Republican primaries where they can be sure that their vote would count in order to support a party whose candidates will have a difficult time even getting on the ballot.
A party trying to get on the ballot will probably have to scramble to get most of the 44,000 signatures in a 75-day period after the precinct conventions from voters who didn’t vote in the primaries or sign another petition. As a result, Texas has some of the most restrictive ballot access laws in the country, especially at the statewide level. It’s even worse for independent Presidential candidates, who need to collect more signatures in a shorter period of time.
If statewide independent candidates being forced to collect 173,000 signatures in California is an injustice, than so is this “paradigm”.
#17 The Democratic and Republican parties do not choose to nominate in March. It is the date set by State law.
It is quite rational and logical that all candidates are nominated roughly at the same time. It makes the administration of the one party per voter system simpler, and something that the ordinary voter can understand. Certainly better than State bureaucrats maintaining files on the political beliefs of its citizens, and requiring a year for a candidate to quit a party, like as is done in California.
#18 Texas permits corporate donations to parties for certain activities such as paying for conventions. The petition supplements the list of participants at the Green Party conventions.
#12: Texas Libertarians have had two successful ballot access drives, and have been on the Texas ballot for all but one election cycle since the early ’80s.
The ballot access laws in Texas are restrictive, but since there have been several successful recent ballot access drives, it would shock me at all for the R/Ds to try to make it MORE restrictive!