On April 13, the Texas House passed HB 2017. It moves the primary from March to February. It does not make the independent presidential candidate petition deadline any earlier. However, it moves the deadline for new party petitions, and non-presidential independents, from May to April.
The bill also moves the deadline for an unqualified party to notify the Secretary of State that it intends to try to qualify, from January 2 of the election year, to October 31 of the year before the election. New parties nominate by convention, not by primary.
No other state has ever had a law that forces an unqualified party to give notice that it intends to qualify, months before it is allowed to start petitioning (Texas won’t let new party or independent candidate petitions start to circulate, until the day after the primary). If HB 2017 is enacted as written, it will make the United States a laughing-stock in the world, if the existence of the law becomes generally known.
More restrictive ballot access crap from the Texas legislature!
October 31 will also become the candidate filing deadline for all parties. (So it could be argued, a party might as well notify the SOS, since it has to have received all its candidate applications by that date.) I don’t know whether an October 31 candidate filing deadline is unusually early.
No Texas law requires presidential candidates of any party to submit a declaration of candidacy at any time (except in relation to running in the Democratic or Republican presidential primaries). But the proposed October 31, 2007 deadline for a new party to tell the Secretary of State that it plans to qualify, would interfere with a new party presidential campaign. For instance, in 2004, Ralph Nader would have been better off doing a party petition. He could have done a Reform Party or a Populist Party petition. That petition would have required far fewer signatures than the independent presidential petition. But Nader didn’t decide to run in 2004 until the end of January 2004, and it was then already too late for him to file the notice of his proposed party. So the party notice does have a real impact.
I wonder, though–if the party only wants to make a nomination for president, and no other offices, then it arguably would not be making any nominations under Chapter 181–it would only be making nominations under Chapter 191/192. Then it could be argued that section 181.0041 would not apply.