On June 20, Texas Governor Rick Perry signed HB 1193, which relaxes the deadline for qualified parties to certify the names of their presidential and vice-presidential nominees. This bill probably would never have been passed if Bob Barr had not sued the Secretary of State last year for listing John McCain and Barack Obama, even though their names were not certified by the deadline. The new deadline is simply related to the date the qualified parties hold their national conventions. In theory a qualified party in Texas in the future could hold a presidential convention in October and the state would still be forced to list their nominees on the ballot.
As a condition of placing their nominee on the ballot, the major parties are required to hold a presidential preference primary, and to use the results of the primary as the basis for allocating a substantial share of the delegates to the national party convention.
It would be absurd to require either (1) that a State party participate in the national convention, but not permit it to place the nominee selected by the national convention on the ballot; or (2) that the State party hold a primary substantially for the purposes of allocating delegates to the national convention, but then independently determine the presidential nominee on the Texas ballot without regard to the national convention.
The Secretary of State had no problem complying with the deadline for certifying to county election officials the candidates for statewide and district offices which were to appear on the ballot.
Further, the deadline had been moved 10 days earlier in 2005 in order to better comply with Federal law regarding overseas voters, particularly those in the military. While not literally required, it was in line with recommended best practice for giving enough time for ballots to be mailed out and returned.
I have no doubt that the deadline would have been adjusted, regardless whether Bob Barr had filed his particularly ill-timed law suit.