On April 25, the Texas Senate passed SB 1705 on second reading, which means it is extremely likely to pass third reading very soon. It requires all parties to nominate by primary, except for newly-qualifying parties. The vote was 17-13, with Republicans in favor and Democrats opposed. An amendment to make the bill effective in 2026, instead of 2024, was defeated.
The bill would require the Libertarian and Green Parties to nominate by primary instead of convention. In Texas, parties must administer their own primaries, which means finding primary polling places and staffing them. Parties are reimbursed for their costs, but the burden is still substantial.
For most of the twentieth century, the Texas Republican Party nominated by convention because it didn’t feel capable of administering statewide primaries for itself. Election administration experts have recommended that states not provide primaries for small qualified parties because they are a waste of taxpayer dollars. In particular, Dr. Joseph P. Harris of U.C. Berkeley, considered the nation’s leading expert on election administration starting in the late 1920’s, until his death in the early 1980’s, held this view, which he published in his book, “A Model Direct Primary System” in 1951.
The last time the Republicans nominated by convention was in 1960 when they nominated John Tower to run for US Senate against LBJ who was also running for VP. After LBJ was elected to both positions he resigned the senate seat which triggered a special election.
John Tower was elected in the special election, becoming the first Republican since reconstruction to be elected to the Senate from Texas. The legislature at that time was composed of 181 Democrats and zero Republicans, Libertarians, Socialists, and independents was apparently alarmed at the prospect of Republicans being elected in Texas.
They added the requirement that convention candidates and independent candidates file a declaration that they wanted to be considered for nomination at a convention or to petition.
This was just a notice. The Democrats apparently did not want someone to enter the race after they had nominated a candidate for Supreme Court Justice who was implicated in a murder-for-hire scheme, or a congressional candidate who was a Larouche supporter and called for the impeachment of President Obama.
It shouldn’t be any of the state’s business whether parties nominate by convention, primary, random drawing, or elimination bout king of the ring ultimate fighting match. It would be better still if just the winning party chose officeholders any way it wants after the election and until the next one. I like that the bill at least makes parties rather than taxpayers pay for their nominations process.
“Election administration experts have recommended that states not provide primaries for small qualified parties because they are a waste of taxpayer dollars.”
Let’s remove the word “small” from that statement.
Primaries are private party functions so I’m in favor of party funding for them. If a party wants to have the state’s election system run the primary, that’s fine, the party can then reimburse the state for its costs of administration.
The issue with this as passed is we’re going to have wide-scale entryism and Republicans/Democrats voting in Libertarian/Green Party races to control those nominations.
I agree with MAXIM , the election should be a choice between parties and their platforms, not individual candidates “hot or not” looks, talent for lying, etc. I also agree that the winning party should pick and replace officers as it wishes ,and that there’s no need to elect anyone except local law enforcement officers who can also serve as judge, jury, and executioner.
Ryan, that is why how the winning party picks peace officers should be up to the winning party. Let us take a practical example.
Suppose a precinct has two parties of long standing : the Traditional Knights of the Ku Klux Klan Party and the Noble Knights of the Teutonic Order Party. At election, the KKK wins handily and controls law enforcement in the precinct over the next year. A new party of Glorious Orthodox Patriarchs is created and their precinct chair leads his men to the election hall the next year.
The KKK see they don’t have enough men to win this time, nor do they have enough men to win if they join with the Teutonic Knights, but if they combine their forces with the GOP, they can have the most men standing at the end for the count, and the GOP can select the law enforcement officers of the precinct for the next year. The question is then, must the GOP allow KKK men to help select the officers? I think it should be up to the GOP precinct chair to decide that question, or any other questions about how they as the winning party picks peace officers.
NOOO extremist party hack caucuses primaries and conventions.
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ONE Election Day
equal ballot access pets/fees
PAT
I like the MAX plan:
One election day : yes
Winning party picks LEOs
Equal Voting Access – Precinct Party Captain leads his knights at election hall on election knight
No ballots – standing count
Vote by party – no “candidates”
No pet fees
First Party Past Post
Winning party picks 100% of officers
One judicial/executive office (peace officer) – no separation of powers – unified office
Only two levels of government – Precinct and National Military
Military picks commander in chief
Precinct noblemen who are 5-generation plus property owners in the precinct and qualified to serve as both judges and law enforcement officers (as the positions will be combined), Christian church members in good standing, gun owners, military or veterans, militia members etc would vote on the winning party that picks the precinct peace officers for the following year.
TOTAL COST FOR ALL CURRENT GOVT ELECTIONS EVEN 0.1 PCT OF USA GDP ???
It’s far more than that because the cost of a perverse election system is a lot more than the administrative cost of elections alone.
For starters, there’s the overhead of your entire federal, state, and local bureaucracy, most of which goes away when you privatize all of government except for police and military, greatly reduce the costs of law enforcement, etc.
Then you get the retarding effect of excessive government regulation on economic growth. You can get a partial appreciation for this by comparing the economic growth rates of different countries around the world and compounding them over time.
Then you get the perverse incentives of the vast byzantine machine of government and the global elitists who prefer a compliant thurd world population, and open the borders to import that population, resulting over time in a thurd world standard of living. You get the destruction of Christian and European civilization which took thousands of years to build over a few short generations because the global elitists prefer dumbed down human cattle to rule over.
You get massive amounts of crime because criminals are coddled, massive amounts of stupidity because the government school teachers unions prefer to create good paying jobs for vast numbers of lazy people to actually teaching children, massive amounts of economic activity throttled by mountains of red tape or shipped overseas to thurd world crapholes. You get the effects of narcoterrorism and human trafficking and unnecessary wars.
As the perverse incentives of a vastly overgrown bureaucracy and overcomplicated election add up, they make it so government more or less inevitably grows over time, leading eventually to totalitarianism – gulags, killing fields, completely dysfunctional economy and society.
Lastly, you get the global depopulation agenda which calls for about 90% of humanity to be killed off, and the last 10% to be permanently enslaved to a tiny fraction of 1% of the remainder, who will themselves all be slaves to a totalitarian world order regardless of what position they occupy in the governing pyramid.
So actually, perverse and retarded systems of government and election cause 100% of your GDP in less than a century, not to mention causing your GDP and ggp (global) to be a lot less than what they could have been without all that mess.
What percentage of your GDP will be impacted by selling out to China through a stolen election?
How about from a stolen election that causes your borders to be erased, or violent criminals allowed to roam the streets freely? We can go on.