On September 10, the Fifth Circuit issued an opinion in Miller v Nelson, 23-50537, upholding virtually every Texas ballot access law that injures minor party and independent candidates. The decision is by Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod, a Bush Jr. appointee. It is also signed by Judge Jacques L. Wiener, a Bush Sr. appointee, and Judge Cory T. Wilson, a Trump appointee. The decision is only 16 pages long, and over half of it merely summarizes the challenged laws and the history of the case.
The judges ignored almost all of the evidence presented by the plaintiffs, and merely say that the challenged laws were upheld by past precedents. Texas badly discriminates against independent presidential candidates as compared to minor parties. It requires more signatures for an independent presidential candidate than for a new party, and gives independent presidential candidates less time to collect the signatures. But the panel said that point was settled in 2004 in Nader v Connor. In 2004, Ralph Nader had sued over the disparate treatment of independent presidential candidates. But the judges in Nader v Connor made a factual mistake. They said that the disparity could be excused because minor party presidential candidates had to file a declaration of candidacy in January of the election year, whereas independent presidential candidates did not need to file such a declaration. This was not true; Texas has never required minor party presidential candidates to file such a declaration early in the year. But the judges in the current case refused to mention that point, even though it had been forcefully argued. Also the judges did not mention any of the cases that say it is unconstitutional for states to require more signatures for an statewide independent candidate than for a new party. Such precedents exist in Alabama, Maryland, and North Carolina.
The judges upheld a 2019 law that requires minor party candidates to pay a filing fee. The plaintiffs had pointed out that the law is discriminatory, because the revenue from major party candidates is sent to those major parties, whereas the government keeps the revenue paid by minor party candidates. The decision’s analysis of this issue is on pages eleven, and is a complete non sequiter. It says, “While the Major Parties retain the fees their candidates pay, the State retains the fees the Minor Party candidates pay.” But then it goes on to say that this is no problem because every candidate must pay the fee. The issue isn’t equal protection for the candidates; it is equal protection for the parties, but nothing is said about that.
The Texas petition deadlines for both minor parties and independent candidates are in May. The decision ignores all the decisions from other states that have struck down petition deadlines as early as May or June. Such precedents exist in Alaska, Arizona, Idaho, Kansas, Massachusetts, Nevada, and South Dakota.
The decision ignore all the evidence in the case that a large number of signatures is not needed to keep the ballot uncrowded. The decision ignores the historical evidence that before 1967, when Texas didn’t require any petition whatsoever for a new party, the ballot was never crowded. Texas never had more than six parties on the ballot.
The lower court had also upheld all of these laws, but it had declared that the failure of Texas to let minor party and independent candidates use electronic signatures violates the Constitution. But the Fifth Circuit reversed that, and it is true that there are no precedents to support the decision made by the U.S. District Court.
Terrible decision.
This sucks ass, with the extra twist of the screw being throwing out the electronic petition requirement on top of upholding the rest of the district court ruling.
Good ruling, no matter what $tock says.
What fascist police state rigged elections? Why would anyone want to abolish all ballot access laws as censorship of the voter’s right to choose their most preferred candidates? Rather than from among those candidates selected for voters by the partisans of state-sponsored political parties who control whose names printed on the ballot?
Were all elections that allowed voter freedom of choice before 1888 when the ballot was monopolized for control by a coalition of two political parties invalid elections?
PARTY HACK SO-CALLED JUDGES AT WORK
WHEN WILL 1954 BROWN V BD OF ED GET MENTIONED ???
1866 14TH AMDT FOLKS WERE AWARE THAT GOP CANDIDATES AND GOP BALLOT PRINTERS RISKED THEIR LIVES IN 1854-1860 IN OLDE SLAVE STATES — INCLU TEXAS
IS THE OPINION SO ROTTED THAT EVEN SCOTUS MAY BLAST/OVERRULE ALL OF ITS JUNK BALLOT ACCESS CASES SINCE 1968 WILLIAMS V RHODES ???
As long as Trump is on the ballot, all is well.
So even if Trump is the only person on the ballot, all is well? I would hope not, since dictatorships are bad.
Republicans are pulling a Democrats on this one, likely because they are very desperate to keep Texas red.
Selectively blind judges willfully ignoring evidence in the US? No, this cannot be! /s
The three RINO judges appointed by three RINO presidents are desperate to keep the blueish state of Texas shifting ever more blueward.
Texas blue? Are you really that fucking stupid?
Tell me you’ve never been to Texas and know fuck all about it, without telling me you’ve never been to Texas and know fuck all about it.
Texas has been purple-blue since the start of the Iraq War, and is getting more blue by the day. If you can’t see that you are fucking stupid or a fucking liar. In your case probably both.
You are as stupid as Robert K $tock. Other than commies in Austin and Houston, Texas is deep red.
I would say the same to you, but that would be offensive towards RKS. You are a good deal more stupid and/or dishonest than him, not to mention a far more rude.
Not just Houston and Austin, but all major cities and most medium cities in Texas are controlled by communists. And they are so densely populated that they get to force their communism on everyone living outside of the cities – the rural red population.
Texas is no different from Washington and Oregon, just a few years behind in the same process. And that has been the case since the start of the Iraq War – earlier even, because it was was already the evident around 9/11 and Bush’s declaration of a “war on terror”.
Back in those days, just after the turn of the millennium, Texas was still purple. But with the influx of illegal immigrants across the border and Democrats fleeing California, New England and the Mid-Atlantic, having learnt nothing from destroying their previous home states and flocking to Texas to destroy their new home state as well, Texas has shifted far further blue over the past quarter century.
Today, Texas is a very blueish purple, or more likely, a purplish blue. It certainly isn’t deep red – except in the communist sense – and hasn’t been for decades. And Texas’ RINOs are some of the worst establishment commies in the “Republican” Party.
The problem with posting of candidate information on the SOS website is not that the Democrats and Republicans can do electronic data entry, but that it provides publicity for the Democratic and Republican primaries (and candidates) that is not available to the Libertarian, Green, or other party conventions.
The Secretary of State has no knowledge whether any Democratic or Republican candidate paid a filing fee or submitted a petition, but the SOS website would give that impression to the general public or prospective voter. There would be no information about candidates seeking a Libertarian or Green party nomination for the same offices.
In Texas, primaries are (or were) conducted by the political parties, but done in a public (statutory) manner. An ordinary decent voter might believe that the counties were putting on the elections. The voter would go to the polling place on election day, show their poll tax receipt and be given the Democratic party ballot. More people would vote in the Democratic primary than the general election, and the Democratic primary would be decisive for all offices. The persons who knew how to run an election, serve as an election judge or clerk, print ballots, secure polling places, etc. were likely the same persons for the Democratic primary and the general election.
But there was no interaction between the party and the State of Texas until after the primary (and runoff) was canvassed. The party would then inform the Secretary of State or county clerk who they had nominated.
There was a need for interaction within the party. For example, the state chair needed to inform the county chairs who had filed for statewide office so that they could appear on the ballot in each county. And the county chairs would have to inform the state chair of the canvassed results in their county, so that the state chair could total up the statewide results. But this would be handled internally.
The political parties were also required to inform newspapers of who had filed. This would let the newspapers publicize the primaries and inform the public who was running – if they deemed this information newsworthy. It was not until 1967 that the SOS was required to be informed of the candidates who had filed an application for a primary. It is unknown (to me) why this change was made (it was made as part of a lengthy omnibus elections bill that had much more substantive changes – such as switching from the poll tax to voter registration). It is unknown (to me) what the SOS did with this document. They may have just filed it.
It was not until 2009 that there was added a requirement to include a filing date with this document. This was so the SOS could pass the list on to the Texas Ethics Commission. In Texas, a candidate was appoint a campaign treasurer before they become a candidate. This is true even if the campaign has not raised any money, and doesn’t intend to.
There was no requirement that convention-nominating parties inform the SOS of which candidates had filed application for consideration until 1985, even though the requirement for that application had been added in 1961.
Beginning in 2013 provisions were added that primary party chairs would file information on the SOS website. The SOS did not maintain this information, but instead provided storage, electricity, internet access, etc. The SOS provides login capabilities (password, etc.) to Democratic and Republican party chairs. Once candidate filing has been completed, the state party chairs inform the county chairs that the candidate information has been posted on the SOS website.
It is this ability to use data entry from paper applications to the SOS website that Judge Pitman has somehow deemed equivalent to paper petitioning. What is the true equal protection violation is the use of state resources to promote the Democratic and Republican primaries and to obscure equivalent activities of other parties.
If Nunya is color coding Texas correctly, why do Republicans keep winning major state offices there as well as most federal races, control of state legislature, etc?
The D leaners in Texas also disproportionately tend to be non voters. Every election the Democrats predict this time they will turn out enough college students, young Latinos, etc to win the big races and so far they’ve generally failed time after time.
Their task is now complicated by the newer trend that the group’s they are waging an uphill battle to turn out are increasingly fed up with them too due to out of control inflation, border chaos, fentanyl epidemic, excess wokeness, etc. The heavily Latino border areas moved in a Republican direction (although still majority D) in 2020 and 2022.
Young voters are polling way less reliably D than in the past. Etc.
I expect Texas to be politically far different from the US west coast for the rest of my lifetime unless maybe quantum leap developments in lifetime extension happen and gain critical mass adoption before I kick the can.
“If Nunya is color coding Texas correctly, why do Republicans keep winning major state offices there as well as most federal races, control of state legislature, etc?”
Look at which “Republicans” win elections in Texas in the last two-three decades. You’ll be extremely lucky if you get a blue-purple rhinoceros like Greg Abbott instead of a deep-blue donkey like Dan Crenshaw. Texas RINOs are become Democrats all the way down, no matter how much they call themselves “Republicans”.
As compared to which and how many states?
As compared to every other state. Name one state where the “Republicans” are more cucked than in Texas?
RINOs in Alaska, Georgia, Utah and Wyoming might be about the same – with Arizona, Massachusetts, Nevada, Ohio and Pennsylvania not far behind – but are they worse than in Texas? Surely not.
And even if they all are, that still leaves at least forty states where self-professed “Republicans” certainly aren’t nearly as blue as in Texas.
Chip Roy and Ted Cruz are Democrats? You really are a fucking retard.
Chip “J6 was an insurrection” Roy and the Zodiac Killer? You really wanna pretend they aren’t? It’s clear which of us is a fucking retard and it sure ain’t me. 😏
Meanwhile, 4:20 AM yesterday remains unanswered. If you move goalposts enough, every Republican politician is a DemoRat and vice versa. What actual “red states” are there?
It’s really urban vs rural more than anything now, not state vs state.
The dense population might FAFO if they want to keep antagonizing the rural heartland past the point of cold civil war. Cities can’t feed themselves, and country boys can survive. The eggheads didn’t think that all the way through, I guess?
Re: it’s clear which one of us is a fucking retard – relax, retards, it’s not a competition or binary choice. Retard status is not exclusive or limited resource. I study retards for a living, which is pretty darn retarded. Y’all are some for real retards. God bless Texas!
Doh. I retardedly presumed your imaginary competition was for the retard prize. But I notice now , in retarded slow fashion, the qualifier fucking. Indeed, not all retards are getting laid. Plenty of retards do get laid, and proudly beget retarded rug rats without the first clue on how to provide for them or raise them to provide for themselves.
But there are also plenty of retarded incels, or as Google automangle keeps “correcting” me, uncles. It’s true that some of my uncle’s who are in corrections are also incels, but not all.
It’s not obvious or even mildly curious to me whether either or both of you are fucking, much less whom or what. What I do or don’t do with my various body parts is likewise between me and who ever I do that with, which is unlikely to be either of you retards.
Politics is a retarded clusterfuck of misleading labels. Trying to make it make sense is totally retarded. You can ignore it, laugh at how retarded it is, or take it seriously like a total idiot. The end result is exactly the same. Choose your own adventure, retards!