Texas Trial Over Filing Fees for Candidates Who Seek a Convention Nomination is Postponed

Texas has a fairly new law, requiring candidates who seek the nomination of a party that uses conventions to pay a large filing fee. If the fee is not paid before the convention begins, the convention cannot consider nominating him or her. The Libertarian Party of Texas has a federal case pending against this law. Bilyeu v Esparza, w.d., 1:21cv-1089. On December 20, the U.S. District Court Judge postponed the trial from September 8, 2025 to November 3, 2025.


Comments

Texas Trial Over Filing Fees for Candidates Who Seek a Convention Nomination is Postponed — 16 Comments

  1. I don’t understand why the management here doesn’t install the akismet plug-in to get rid of bot spam. Every other WordPress based discussion forum on the internet does!

  2. The parties had agreed to an extension of discovery. The SOS was had a hard time producing materials because of the election.

  3. There is a reason for having filing when there is a primary because the political party has to print ballots. The filing fee was used to pay for paper and ink, and to hire election judges and clerks. It is still used for that purpose, though the State of Texas subsidizes the primaries. The county party chair keeps some of the filing fee, and the election judges and clerks are party supporters. It is in effect a patronage job.

    But when nomination is by convention there is little reason to have a pre-filing. When the Republican Party nominated by convention they never had to file before a convention. It was only in 1961 just before John Tower was about to be elected as US Senator that the legislature passed the pre-filing law for convention AND independent candidates. The legislature consisted of 150 Democrat representatives and 31 Democrat senators and the bill said it was to make it fair for primary parties. But there was only one primary party.

    Perhaps there is a reason for filing since it permits the party to organize a convention for certain nominations, but there is no reason for the State of Texas to collect a fee.

  4. HOW MUCH STUFF IN TEXAS FROM BEFORE1964 WHEN TX WAS A ONE PARTY TYRANT REGIME ???

    NOOO PARTY HACK EXTREMIST PRIMARIES

    ONE ELECTION DAY
    EQUAL NOM PETS/ FEES
    PR
    APPV
    TOTSOP

  5. @Standing Stan,

    Conventions can use standing counts to make nominations.

    Texas would make potential candidates pay a filing fee to be able to stand.

  6. The standing count plan only has one election per year. If some group wants to select and anounce its would be officeholders ahead of the election in case they win, that’s their business, as is how they would select those.

  7. @Standing Count Stan,

    13 million persons voted in Texas. Where would they meet under your plan?

  8. We’ve been over that. Representatives of each precinct can meet to elect higher level offices, and representatives of those meetings can meet to elect higher level offices than that, etc.

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