Texas held primaries on March 6 for Congress and partisan state and county office. Approximately 1,600,000 voters chose a Republican ballot, and approximately 1,060,000 voters chose a Democratic ballot, for a total of 2,660,000 primary voters.
Texas has 15,249,541 registered voters, so this is a turnout of approximately 17%. Texas almost always has one of the nation’s lowest turnout rates. Perhaps if the Texas primary were later in the year, turnout would be higher. The only other state with a March primary is Illinois, which holds its primaries this year on March 20. After that, no state has a primary earlier than May 8.
Six unqualified parties are now legally permitted to begin petitioning for a place on the general election ballot. Voters who voted in the primary cannot sign such petitions. Texas is the only state that bars primary voters from signing a petition to place a party on the general election ballot.
I thought that the LP was qualified in Texas based on Mark Miller pulling over 5% in his race in 2016? Would they have to petition? And did they have a primary, or was that limited to just R’s and D’s.
https://enrpages.sos.state.tx.us/
Primary stats
Runoff primary for some offices.
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NO primaries
PR and AppV
The Libertarian Party is qualified in Texas and need not petition. The six unqualified parties do not include the Libertarian Party. Among the six are the Green Party and the Texas Independent Party. They are probably the only two that will even try to petition.
Texas has two types of qualified party, large ones that nominate by primary, and smaller ones that nominate by convention. The Libertarians nominate by convention.
Test for becoming a *large* qualified party in Texas ???
Also for the BAN super-database —
How many *minor* parties are having *regular* primaries in the 50 States/DC in 2018 ???
What was the minor parties primaries max in 1890-1932 ???
http://elections.sos.state.tx.us/elchist319_state.htm
2016
Railroad Commissioner
Wayne Christian REP 4,648,841 53.07%
Grady Yarbrough DEM 3,362,041 38.38%
Mark Miller LIB 462,251 5.28%
Martina Salinas GRN 287,105 3.28%
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Race Total 8,760,238
https://www.npr.org/2018/03/06/591162259/with-rising-voter-turnout-democrats-hope-to-turn-parts-of-texas-blue
Stuff about gerrymander open seats.
Parties that nominate by convention hold their precinct conventions next Tuesday, March 13. Voters sign into these conventions the same they would if they had voted in a party primary. They show ID, and affirm that they have not and will not participate in the nominating activities of another party this year. The precinct conventions choose delegates to county and district conventions, where some nominations are made. The county conventions choose delegates to the state convention, who in turn will choose the statewide nominees. The number of attendees determines whether or not the nominees appear on the general election ballot. (The Libertarian Party does not need to qualify, since they qualify based on past election results).
A party that has insufficient attendance at their precinct conventions may supplement that with signatures on a supplementary petition, circulated after the convention. Voters who sign a petition must have been eligible to attend the precinct convention of the party. To sign a new party petition, one can not have voted in the Democratic or Republican primary, or a Libertarian convention, or the convention of any other party, and after signing the petition may not vote in the Democratic or Republican primary runoffs, or another convention.
In ‘American Party of Texas v White’ it was speculated that the pool of possible signatories was 25% of the electorate. But it appears about 83% of the electorate chose not to affiliate with the Republican or Democratic Party, which makes the pool of potential signers 12.6 million registered voters.
A party petition circulator would first screen potential signers based on whether they had voted in a primary. They are not eligible to sign. So over 4/5 of the time the answer would be NO.
One more example/reason to abolish all robot party HACK stuff – caucuses, primaries and conventions
— which now are just meetings of extremist gangsters.
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PR and AppV
https://enrpages.sos.state.tx.us/public/mar06_324_state.htm
DD Primary
https://enrpages.sos.state.tx.us/public/mar06_325_state.htm
RR Primary
LOW, LOW votes for the many gerrymander monsters later to be elected in Nov 2018 —
who act like they get 100.00 percent of the votes.
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NO primaries.
PR and AppV