Texas has a unique law, requiring that any group that intends to petition for party status must notify the state no later than January 2 of an election year. This year, ten groups filed the notice, more than ever before. The requirement has existed since 1993, has never been tested in court, and would probably be held unconstitutional if a new party formed after January 2 ever challenged it in court.
The ten groups that filed the notice are described in this Politex story. The ten are Americans Elect, Christian, Constitution, Generation, Justice, Make America Great, Reform, Revive America, Socialist, and Texas Independent Party. The Christian and Generation Parties have recently said that they don’t really expect to petition in 2012, although because they filed the notice, they are legally free to do so. Thanks to Bill Van Allen for the link.
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Texas combines the qualification and nomination process.
Some states, such as California, require parties to qualify in advance, and then they hold a (presidential) primary afterwards.
Other states let parties nominate by some private process, and then petition to have the party nominees qualify for the ballot.
Texas combines the two.
In Texas, small parties nominate by convention, with the conventions being held contemporaneously with the primaries for the larger parties.
New parties qualify on the basis of participation in their precinct conventions. Texas does not have permanent party registration. A voter affiliates with a party by participating in its nominating activities – primaries and conventions. A voter may only affiliate with one party. At the end of the year their record is cleansed. So essentially a new party qualifies when enough voters affiliate with the party by attending its precinct conventions.
Texas then permits a new party to supplement its roster of convention attendees with a supplementary petition. Since precinct conventions are organized by the party, they might not be held everywhere, and you have to attend at a particular time (before this year, this was on primary election night), not all persons who might wish to affiliate with the party may be able to do so. The supplementary petition serves that function.
The registration that Richard Winger refers to is actually the intent of the political party to nominate by convention (181.0041). It also applies to the Libertarian and Green parties. It simply notifies the state that it intends to hold precinct conventions in early March to nominate candidates for the general election, who the state and county officers are, and what the rules of the party are.
Texas does not require a party to be organized in every county (neither the Republicans or Democrats are), but county parties make nominations for county and precinct offices, and district offices wholly contained in a county.
If you were planning to have potentially 1000s of meetings around Texas to actually form a party, you would already be organizing 2 months before.
The SCOTUS in American Party of Texas v White said that it was “too plain for argument”, that Texas could require nomination by primary or convention. And since a convention is a public activity, it is quite reasonable to require a party to have rules for the conduct of its nominating activities. It is quite possible that some of them are subject to VRA Section 5 preclearance.
It is quite reasonable that parties nominate by convention and that nominations be contemporaneous. And two months is quite reasonable to give public notice of the intent to conduct public nominating activities.
If there were to be a timing challenge, it would be on the early nominating activities for all parties. But have there been any court decisions in that regard?
Each election is N-E-W — much too difficult for the SCOTUS robot party hacks to understand ???
#2, when the US Supreme Court said it was too plain for argument that Texas could require nomination by primary or caucus, that was in response to the American Party’s demand that Texas give it a primary. The US Supreme Court was not confronted with the need to decide if a party can demand a convention when the state wants to give it a primary.