The Texas Tribune has this story about the Texas procedures for independent presidential candidates. The story would be better if it mentioned that the petition deadline for independents running for office other than President is June 30, whereas the presidential independent deadline is May 9. Anyone who challenges the Texas independent presidential petition deadline is overewhelmingly likely to win in court. There is no state interest in requiring independent presidential candidates to file petitions 52 days earlier before other independent candidates must file. The U.S. Supreme Court said in Anderson v Celebrezze that states must have easier ballot access procedures for independent presidential candidates than for other office.
Another deficiency with the Texas law is that presidential independents need 79,939 signatures, whereas independent candidates for other statewide office need 47,086. The U.S. Supreme Court said in Anderson v Celebrezze, 460 U.S. 780, at page 795, “The state has a less important interest in regulating Presidential elections than statewide or local elections”, and this quote was a key element of the March 17, 2016 U.S. District Court decision that struck down Georgia’s petition requirement of 50,000 signatures for independent and new party presidential ballot access.
The state interest in different deadlines is that in some instances, signatures for non-presidential offices may not be collected until after the primary runoff, whereas presidential signing could have begun on March 2.
Texas requires 38 presidential elector candidates. If they helped out in the collection effort, that is only about 2000 signatures each.
That is not a state interest. There may be a state interest in preventing the general election ballot from being too crowded, and to achieve that aim, the state may shorten the petitioning period. But because no independent presidential petition has succeeded in Texas in sixteen years, there is obviously no need to worry about a ballot being too crowded. The rationale of the March 17, 2016 U.S. District Court decision in the Georgia Green Party case should apply equally to Texas. The decision says that the evidence shows that if a state requires at least 5,000 signatures, it will never have a crowded ballot.
It is a state interest to have contemporaneous nomination, and to discourage factionalism. The difference in deadlines is due to the primary screen out.
Incidentally, the deadline for independent non-presidential candidates is June 23, 30 days after the primary runoff.
The US Supreme Court has rebutted the idea that states have an interest in having every candidate file simultaneously. Anderson v Celebrezze, Mandel v Bradley, even Jenness v Fortson (“Sometimes the grossest discrimination can lie in treating things that are different as though they were exactly alike, a truism well illustrated in Williams v Rhodes.”)
The deadline for independent non-presidential candidates is June 23, 30 days after the primary runoff.
It would not be an improvement for the Texas Tribune to publish an erroneous date.
I did not say simultaneously. I said contemporaneously. Nomination, whether by an organized party in a primary, or an ad hoc group of voters nominating by petition is a nomination.
In Texas, independent nominations are made by voter who are not affiliated with a political party. Their nominations are made shortly after political parties have made their nominations.