The July 25 San Antonio Express-News has this lengthy and interesting story about the Texas Green Party and its fight to get on the ballot this year. But what is most revealing about the story is the very last paragraph, which quotes a Democratic Party opponent of the Green Party, Christian Archer. The story describes him as a Democratic Party consultant.
Archer says, “I believe the (ballot access) laws are unconstitutional. If anybody would challenge what it takes to get on the ballot, they would win in court.” It is ignorant for Archer to say that, and it is bad journalism for the reporter to have printed that without challenging Archer. Most of the repressive Texas ballot access laws were upheld in the U.S. Supreme Court in 1974 in American Party of Texas v White. The vote was 8-1 to uphold the number of signatures, the primary screenout, the notarization requirement, and the short period for collecting signatures.
More repressive Texas ballot access laws have been added since. But in 1996, the 5th circuit upheld the requirement that independent candidates (for office other than President) must file a declaration of candidacy in January. And in 2004, the 5th circuit upheld the discriminatory parts of the law that require independent presidential candidates to obtain 40% more signatures than independent candidates for other statewide office, and also upheld the earlier deadline for independent candidates than for new parties. And in 2006, the 5th circuit upheld petition-checking procedures that allow election authorities to take a very long time to tell independent candidates whether their petition is valid or not. Thanks to Kimberly Wilder for the link.
Who in the New Age know-it-all 24/7 media has ANY brains to detect —
Separate is NOT equal.
Brown v. Bd of Ed 1954
— since armies of brain dead MORON ballot access laws have not been able to do so since 1968 — Williams v. Rhodes and ALL later MORON SCOTUS ballot access cases.
1) Demo Rep…please just go away.
2) Texas sucks when it comes to democracy. And I live here.
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Christian Archer was Bill White’s campaign manager when he ran for Houston mayor. I don’t know whether he has a formal role in the gubernatorial campaign. One thing he is noted for is making sure campaigns stay on message.
So you have Chad Dunn, the lawyer for the Texas Democratic claiming that “obviously” the party is in favor of ballot access for 3rd parties; you have the head of the League of Conservation Voters claiming that his organization “normally” favors 3rd-party ballot access (his group received a donation from Bill White in 2009 which was used to fund a membership drive, and has in turn endorsed White); and White-insider Christian Archer claiming that the scheme is unconstitutional and that he implicitly opposes them.
All candidates for office (other than President) must file their declaration of candidacy in January, regardless whether they are seeking nomination by primary, by convention, or petition. Since voters are restricted to supporting the nomination of a single candidate, having all potential candidates know prior to the formal nomination period is quite logical.
Congress should pass a law forbidding any formal election activities more than 180 days before the (congressional) election. If states wanted to hold separate primaries for state offices they could of course do so.
Texas law bases the number of signatures for presidential candidates on the statewide vote for president, and for other offices on the gubernatorial vote in the particular territory where an office is contested. There is no fixed 140% ratio.
In 2006, there were two independent candidates for governor. It is relatively easily to check one petition using sampling, because the SOS has statewide registration rolls, including whether a voter voted in a party primary. But if you are checking for duplicate signatures between two separate independent petitions, sampling does not work as well, or requires much larger samples.
Imagine that you had 2 petitions with 50,000 signatures, with 20% overlap (10,000 signatures). If you took a sample of 500 signatures from each petition (a 1% sample), you would expect 100 of the signatures to be duplicates. But since the sample was 1%, you would only expect one duplicate signature to show up in both samples.
The state transcribed the petitions into a format that could be compared by computer against the registration rolls and each other. In effect, creating the equivalent of the list of voters in each primary, for each candidate petition. One of the candidates had already done this, but I doubt that the state could require this be done. That candidate had a much larger share of his signatures accepted, and was also able to fit them in many fewer boxes.
Great headline…
superb story…
you will be news please