On May 14, the Texas House Elections Committee passed SB 817, which would provide that ballot-qualified parties that nominate by convention hold their state convention in April, instead of June. Texas primaries are in March. The Libertarian Party requested this bill. The party’s experience has been that the campaigns for its nominees would be advantaged, if the candidates could present themselves to the public as official nominees earlier in the process. The bill has already passed the Senate. The Green Party also supports this bill. The bill would have no effect on petition deadlines for newly-qualifying parties, which would continue to be in May. Thanks to Jim Riley for this news.
What would be even better would be to respect the Right of private organizations to have their State Conventions whenever they chose.
Jeff Daiell
Agreed!
Texas does not make a distinction between convention-nominating parties that have qualified based on their previous result and newly-qualifying parties as to the process of making nominations:
(1) Notify SOS that you are going to nominate by convention, including submission of rules and party officers.
(2) Declaration of candidacy.
(3) Precinct conventions.
(4) County convention.
(5) District conventions.
(6) State conventions.
Nominations are done at steps (4), (5), and (6), for offices within a county, multi-county district offices, and statewide offices, respectively.
The precinct conventions were on the night of the primary until the primary was shifted to a week earlier, and they forgot to change the date of the precinct conventions for convention-nominating parties.
It was the head count at the precinct conventions that was intended to be used to qualify a political party. In effect it is a quorum necessary to make nominations. At the time of American Party of Texas v White, convention-nominating parties were required to file their precinct participation lists, just as primary-nominating parties file the signature roster from the primaries for each precinct.
So in theory you have a competition to get voters either to vote in a primary or attend a precinct convention for a convention-nominating party.
Nominations for a primary-nominating party were made in the primary or the runoff a month later; while the nominations for the precinct-nominating parties were made at higher-level conventions within about a month.
At the time of American Party of Texas v White the schedule was:
Primary Nominating Parties
Primary: 1st Saturday in May
Runoff: 1st Saturday in June
Convention Nominating Parties
Precinct Convention: 1st Saturday in May
County Convention: 2nd Saturday in May
District Conventions: 3rd Saturday in May
State Convention: 2nd Saturday in June
The supplemental petition is (and was) due 75 days after the precinct convention, in mid-July. If you read the decision in American Party of Texas v White, the SCOTUS made note that (1) the nominating process was roughly equivalent and contemporaneous between primary-nominating and convention-nominating parties; (2) The signature collection period was of reasonable length; and (3) the process concluded within a reasonable time of the general election (about 120 days).
Under the old schedule, the state convention was right in the middle of the signature collection period. Signatures could be collected after the state nominees were known, and the statewide nominations would be concluded at about the same date as those for primary-nominating parties if they had a runoff.
In 1986, the primary was moved to March and all the dates were adjusted, except for the state convention.
Primary Nominating Parties
Primary: 2nd Tuesday in March
Runoff: 2nd Tuesday in April
Convention Nominating Parties
Precinct Convention: 2nd Tuesday in March
County Convention: 1st Saturday after 2nd Tuesday in March
District Conventions: 2nd Saturday after 2nd Tuesday in March
State Convention: 2nd Saturday in June
So everything was moved but the state convention. They probably confused the role of the state convention for primary-nominating parties which is more in preparation for the national convention and serves no direct role in the nominating process, and for the convention-nominating parties which is to make the statewide nominations.
The period for collecting supplemental signatures was kept the same, so now it ends almost six months before the election, and it also ends before the state convention.
When the Green Party was qualifying in 2010, the lawsuit by the Democratic Party was going on before the Green Party state convention. The Green Party was forced to accept a decision by a Democratic district judge who made a $10,000 contribution to the Travis County Democratic Party the day after his decision, in order that they could appeal to a higher court. Had they had the judge recuse himself, they’d miss having the state convention (they also had a concern about expending money on an event that might be moot).
If the filing deadline for the supplemental petition were after the state convention, then the nominations would have been made, and any injunction would been against the Secretary of State placing the nominees on the November ballot. This would have been removed before the general election.
So the effect of SB 817 is just to restore the rough correspondence of the nominating processes as they were before 1986, albeit two months earlier.
#1 That assumes that the conventions are mostly about party business. They are just an alternative to primaries.
Now that counties are pretty much doing all the work for primaries it would be better to go to a blanket non-partisan primary. Any candidate who got 3% or more of the vote would qualify for the October general election. New candidates could petition, and political parties would be free to support candidates without any interference from the government.
A runoff would be held on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.