On April 14, the Texas Senate passed SB 100, by Senator Leticia Van de Putte (D-San Antonio). As amended, the bill leaves the Texas primary in early March. But it moves the runoff primary from the 2nd Tuesday in April, to the 4th Tuesday in May. The motivation for the bill is the federal law that requires overseas absentee ballots to be mailed no later than 45 days before any election. The existing system can’t cope with that requirement, because the existing system has too little time between the primary and the runoff primary.
The bill has some inadvertent effects on various deadlines for candidates. If this bill becomes law, the petition deadline for an independent candidate for any office except President will move from May 14 to June 21. That, of course, is helpful to independent candidates who are not running for President. But, oddly, the petition deadline for an independent presidential candidate would continue to be May 14. This is because, under the existing law and under the bill as well, the petition deadline for independent candidates for office other than President is tied to the date of the runoff primary. But the independent presidential petition is not. It is difficult to believe that any court would uphold the constitutionality of a state law that says independent presidential candidates must submit their petition (which requires 80,778 signatures) by May 14, yet the petition deadline for independent candidates for other statewide office (who need 49,799 signatures) would be 38 days later. The U.S. Supreme Court said in Anderson v Celebrezze said ballot access for presidential candidates who run outside the major parties must be easier than ballot access candidates for other office. If SB 100 passes, Texas will have that completely backwards.
SB 100 also moves the deadline for all non-presidential candidates to file a declaration of candidacy from January 2 of the election year, to the third Monday in December of the year before the election. This deadline even applies to independent candidates (but not presidential independent candidates). If this passes, Texas will be the only state in the nation that requires an independent candidate to file a declaration of candidacy in the odd year before an election year. The only other state that ever required an independent candidate for any office to file anything in the odd year before the election year had been Illinois, which had once required non-presidential independent candidates to file a petition in December of the year before the election. But that deadline was held unconstitutional in 2006 in Lee v Keith, 463 F.3d 763 (7th Circuit).
SB 100 passed the Senate on second reading and third reading on the same day. Normally the Constitution forbids bills to pass without at least one day between second reading and third reading, but a legislative chamber has the authority to waive that rule. Senator Jeff Wentworth (R-San Antonio) objected to passing the bill so speedily. He said if the normal rule were followed, the news of the bill passing second reading would give the public a chance to find any flaws in the bill before the bill passes third reading. Thanks to Jim Riley for the news about HB 100.