Texas will have a new Speaker of the House of Representatives, when the legislature convenes next week. He is Joe Straus, age 49, who has only served two terms and has never been a committee chairman. The outgoing speaker, Tom Craddick, had been in the House since 1969. Republicans control the new House by a narrow margin (76-74) but not all Republicans were willing to re-elect Craddick.
It is not clear if having a new Speaker will make it easier to pass ballot access reform or not. If you are a Texan and have some insight into this, please comment. Texas drastically toughened ballot access in 1967.
As a texan I think ballot access reform for third parties and independents is so far down the list of priorities for legislators that it doesn’t matter who the speaker is nothing will be done. Hope I am wrong but that is what I see.
Joe Straus co-authored the “primary screenout” reform bill in the last session.
Bill information:
http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/BillLookup/History.aspx?LegSess=80R&Bill=HB2280
Joe Straus co-authored the “primary screenout†reform bill in the 2007 session.
Click on my name (at the top of the comment) for more information on that bill.
(I tried putting the link in the body of a previous comment, but it seemed to interfere with the comment getting displayed.)
You’d figure a state like Texas would have term limits…
What’s Straus’s position on voter ID?
Requiring a 2/3 vote, voter ID passed the House in 2007 but failed in the Senate.
The general structure of ballot access laws in Texas was upheld in American Party of Texas vs. White. Only 500 signatures are required to run as an independent for Congress in Texas, about 1/20 to 1/30 as many as needed in intolerant States such as Illinois or California. IIRC, 500 signatures was the cap that Representative Ron Paul has proposed that Congress adopt as a national standard. Perhaps ballot access advocates should encourage Speaker Pelosi (D-CA) and former Senator Obama (D-IL) to support this important change.
Texas requires a timely special election to replace US Senators, avoiding the corrupt process used in Delaware, Colorado, New York, and Illinois. The last time such an election was held in 1993, there were 24 candidates on the ballot. Ballot access of course does not matter if you can’t be bothered to actually hold an election.
#5 The House vote was very much a party-line vote. Strauss voted for it.
The 2/3 vote in the Senate is a procedural requirement of the senate rules. The Senate does not have a calendar or rules committee, and (in theory) bills are taken up by the full senate for 2nd reading in the order that the bills are reported by subject-matter committee. But bills can be considered out of regular order on a motion supported by 2/3 of the senators.
In practice, the first bill passed out of committee is an innocuous bill that is never considered by the senate. Instead, other bills are taken up out of regular order by a 2/3 vote of the senators. If there were no bill that could get 2/3 support, then the senate would simply wade through bills one by one, and likely get bogged down by all kinds of other procedural delays.
#1 Joe Straus is author of a bill that would eliminate straight ticket voting. This could possibly have an effect on maintaining the ballot status for 3rd parties, which requires that a statewide candidate of a party receive 5% of the votes cast for an office in order for the party to maintain its ballot access. In the past, the Libertarian Party has maintained its ballot status by garnering around 20% of the vote in statewide judicial races in which the Democratic Party did not field a candidate.
In races where there were both Republican and Democratic candidates, the Libertarians ordinarily receive 2-4% of the vote, typically doing better the further down the ballot the race is, and where the candidates are less well known.
In 2008, there was only one judicial race in which the Democratics did not field a candidate. If they had run a candidate, the Libertarian Party would have lost its ballot status.
A rather large share of votes are straight party votes. Elimination of the straight party option would tend to reduce the total number of votes cast for the major party candidates in down-ballot races. While some straight-ticket voters might simply resort to voting for every candidate of “their” party, some will want to demonstrate their “independence” by voting for a candidate of another party when they are otherwise unfamiliar with the candidate or even the office.
And elimination of straight-ticket voting is necessary for replacement of the partisan primaries with a truly open non-partisan primary as used in Washington, Louisiana, and Nebraska. Such a system would greatly improve ballot access. In Texas, it is much easier to qualify for a partisan primary ballot than to run as an independent. An open non-partisan primary would also likely be later in the year (currently it is the first Tuesday in March) since there is no reason to coordinate the election with a presidential primary.
#7: As I understand it, then, the 2007 Texas voter ID measure was a bill and not a constitutional amendment.
Which means that it just needed a simple majority to pass the House.
Joe Straus was rated as the “most libertarian member of the Texas House” in 2007 by the Libertarian Party of Texas. He score highest in both the economic and personal liberty sides.
He will be a significant improvement from the libertarian perspective over social conservative Tom Craddick.
Moreover, he has a much more genial, approchable and friendly manner than Craddick.
As the rest of the Nation, moves Hard Left, almost Fascist, Texas appears to be moving in a more libertarian direction all around.
#9: “As I understand it, then, the 2007 Texas voter ID measure was a bill and not a constitutional amendment.
Which means that it just needed a simple majority to pass the House.”
That is also true of the Senate.
Here is the basic process for passing a bill in each chamber:
(1) Bill introduced (or passed over from opposite chamber);
(2) 1st reading before full body;
(3) Referral to subject-matter committee;
(4) Committee hearings;
(5) Report of committee on bill;
(6) Scheduling of bill for 2nd reading;
(7) 2nd reading, consideration;
(8) 3rd reading, final passage.
The constitution requires consideration of a bill on 3 separate days, and also that it be considered in committee.
(1) The first reading is very perfunctory. A clerk starts to read the bill at an auctioneer rate, and is then interrupted with a motion to suspend reading, this is by unanimous consent; and a second late the gavel strikes, and they go on to the next bill. A good presiding officer can go through 2 or 3 bills a minute.
(6) This step differs between the two chambers. In the House, a bill goes to a calendar committee which schedules bills for consideration. If you want to kill a bill, you just stick it on the bottom of the stack.
Under Senate rules, bills are scheduled in the time order that they are reported by a committee. Nominally, the Senate would simply work its way through all bills one at a time (regular order). But by a 2/3 vote, the Senate can decide to take up any other bill out of regular order.
In practice, no bill is ever considered in regular order. Instead selected bills are brought forward on a motion that requires a 2/3 vote (this is by the Senate rules and has nothing to do with any constitutional restrictions). It has also become the standard (informal) procedure for a would-be sponsor to secure a list of 2/3 of the senators that his motion to take up a bill would pass. If not, the Lieutenant Governor won’t even bother recognizing the senator to make the motion. This avoids having a public record. In the past there have been bills that have passed by the House unanimously that couldn’t even get Senate consideration.
If a bill is ever brought up for 2nd reading, it needs a simple majority to pass.
In the Killer Bee episode in 1979, which was about a proposal for a separate presidential primary so John Connally could run in the Republican presidential primary, Lt. Governor Hobby was prepared to simply take up every bill in regular order until they got to the primary bill. 12 liberal Democrats broke quorum and hid out in Austin.
In the 2003 redistricting struggle, there was no intent to get rid of the 2/3 rule. Since it was a special session, only items on the Governor’s call are in order. Traditionally, the legislature considers other bills with the hope that their subject matter will subsequently be added by the governor to his call. But they have no need to, and it would certainly be proper for the presiding officer to comply with the constitution and prevent consideration of extraneous legislation. If the only bill passed out of committee was a redistricting bill, the Senate would consider it in regular order. Most Democrat senators flew off to New Mexico to break quorum and avoid arrest.
BTW, the Senate amended its rules yesterday, so that consideration of the Voter ID bill will only require a 3/5 vote to be brought up for consideration.