The Texas legislature is discussing whether to move the state’s primary from March to April. See this story. Senator Leticia Van de Putte (D-San Antonio) would like to amend her SB 100 to make this change. SB 100, as introduced, only concerns procedures for absentee voting, but the bill could be amended to revise the primary date. If the legislature moved the primary from March to April, that would automatically mean a later petition deadline for minor party and independent candidate petitions, for office other than President.
Other bills that might serve as vehicles for the primary date change are HB 111 and HB 3585, by Representative Van Taylor (R-Plano).
Texas currently has the earliest petition deadline in the nation for independent presidential candidates. Unfortunately, the independent presidential petition deadline is not keyed to the date of the primary, so if the primary is moved to a later date, that would not improve the independent presidential deadline.
SB 100 concerns procedures for military and overseas voters, and the reason for changing the primary date is to accommodate the sending of ballots overseas 45 days before an election, including the primary and the primary runoff, so the date of the elections is definitely related.
You have misread Sen. Van de Putte’s position. She is interested in changing the election calendar, but not in the way that you interpreted the Startlegram article. It is the Republicans who favor moving the primary to April (I doubt the 5th which is Maundy Thursday in 2012).
Currently, the filing deadline is January 2. The date is deliberately set in the even-numbered year of elections, because there is a constitutional provision that county officials must resign if they file for another office with more than a year left on their term. Also if filing is moved back into the odd-year, definitions of voter party affiliation have to be modified, since currently they are based on a calendar year.
It’s not clear why there is a problem complying with the 45-day overseas window, when the filing deadline is 64 days before the election. Maybe another week or two of slack is needed.
Sen. Van de Putte in other articles has indicated that she favors pushing the filing deadline back into December. As you know, all candidates, whether seeking a partisan nomination by primary or convention, or as an independent by petition must file their declaration of candidacy at this time. So Van de Putte actually favors making the filing deadline earlier. This would mean that a representative would file for a 2-year term less than halfway through their previous term. Since the deadline for filing the supplementary petition for precinct convention attendees for new parties is based on the date of the primary, Van de Putte would not change that.
The next problem is the primary runoff which currently is the 2nd Tuesday in April. There is no way to canvass the primary votes and send out new ballots 45 days before the runoff. So it would have to be moved, even if the primary remained on March 6. This would have an effect on independent candidates, since they can’t begin gathering signatures prior to a runoff in which their office is on the ballot, and they have 30 days after the runoff date to complete their petition.
But moving the primary runoff from April into May puts it on top of the May uniform election date. Primary elections are administered by the political parties, but they typically use county election equipment, polling locations, and early voting is performed by county officials. Having two different elections at the same time would be a mess.
So you either put the runoff into June, so it would straddle the local elections, or you move the local elections into June. But school districts have July-June fiscal years, so a school year is within one fiscal year. If local elections were moved, it could make if difficult for newly elected school board members to participate in the budget process.
The independent presidential filing date is set to a specific date (May 2nd). Changing the primary date does not change it, but since petition signers may not have voted in a presidential primary, it would shorten the period for gathering signatures. There is really no reason that Texas couldn’t move the filing date for independent candidates until August. This would give the counties time to count the signatures. There would likely be more signatures from voters who had voted in a presidential primary, but it is not like that is impossible to check.