Texas Bill that Moves Independent Candidate Petition Deadline Two Weeks Earlier Advances

Posted on by May 24, 2025

Texas Senate Bill 1209 would move the runoff primary from the 4th Tuesday in May to the 2nd Tuesday in May. If it passes, it would automatically move the independent candidate petition deadline from June 25 to June 11. On May 22 it passed the House Elections Committee. It had already passed the Senate. Thanks to Jim Riley for this news.

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Texas Bill that Moves Independent Candidate Petition Deadline Two Weeks Earlier Advances — 20 Comments

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  11. The change in deadline is a side effect of the main provision of the bill, which is to eliminate the May uniform election date for local elections.

    Historically, local elections (cities and school districts, and special districts) have not been held on the November general election date, and it was illegal to hold them on the primary dates which were in July and August. Each city and school district was responsible for conducting their own election. Later, four uniform election dates were set, on Saturday in January, April, and August, plus the Tuesday November election. The uniform election dates were also used for special elections to fill vacancies. The January and August dates have been eliminated.

    The primary and primary runoff have moved from July and August, to May and June, and then March and April, and from Saturday to Tuesday. This caused the April uniform date to be moved to May. When it was required that overseas and military mail ballots be sent out 45 days before elections, the primary runoff was moved to after the May uniform election date, so as to permit ballots to be prepared after the primary election.

    SB 1209 eliminates the May uniform election date, and moves the primary runoff two weeks earlier in May.

    The filing deadline for independent petition candidates in 1905 was 30 days after the late July primary. This permitted enough time for ballots to be prepared for the November general election. The primary runoff was added in 1920. In 1951, the deadline for independent candidates was made 30 days after the primary runoff. It has been tethered to the primary runoff ever since. With a May primary runoff, the filing deadline for independent candidates will be five months before the general election.

    Independent candidates must declare their intent to petition in December of the year before the election.

  12. For safekeeping, awaiting APPROVAL at TPW

    Mr. Flood,

    I’ve refreshed my memory with some online searches. I’ll work my way back around to Mr. Rowlette’s contentions and my follow ups ; please be patient and bear with me.

    If you’re talking about 1860, that’s a completely different split. The Democratic Party which is nominally the same one as exists today was created in 1828 and the Republicans in 1854.

    The Democratic-Republican Party existed in 1792-1824/8, and was actually also formally known as the Republican Party, but had nothing to do with the Republican Party that was founded in 1854 and existed ever since, although like today’s Democrats their coalition and position stances changed a lot over the decades. To avoid confusion with today’s Republicans or Democrats, modern historians call the 1792-1834 Republicans “Democratic Republicans” or “Jeffersonian Republicans”. However, at the time it was simply the Republican Party.

    That Republican party was started by Jefferson, Madison and friends as the successor to the Antifederalists, and its opposition was the Federalist party. The federalist party collapsed after 1800, and especially after 1815.

    For a while, the Republican party which we call Democratic-Republican today was the only major party – the “era of good feelings”.

    They splintered after 1824. One side evolved into the Democratic-Republicans formally, and soon after that into the Democrats. He other side became the Whigs, which can be argued to have been in some respects the heir of the Federalists, although it wasn’t a continuous or direct transition.

    In this schematic, the Democrats of 1828- came from the Antifederalists, which is more or less true, while it can be said somewhat less precisely that the Whigs were the successor to the Federalists.

    However, both the Democrats and Whigs of the 1828-1860 period were from the start, and increasingly as that period went on, split over slavery related questions, especially as they related to westward expansion and the creation of new territories and States.

    The Whigs were split the most over such questions, and by the 1850s collapsed as a major party. The Republicans of 1854- were one of the minor parties which started to take their place in the north, and quickly absorbed the others to become the new opposing major party in congress and in the presidential election of 1856.

    Meanwhile, in the South most Whigs left them for the American Party (which also existed in the north). Over a century later, some of us drew inspiration from that American Party to start a new one of that same name, also known as American Independent – vestiges of which still exist, mainly in Western states, today.

    The original American Party was created by the merger of the American Republican party, a local patriotic nationalist organisation in New York City in 1843, and Southern and pro-Southern Whigs. It was a somewhat major party in the 1840s and 50s.

    A derisive, and I think very unfair, colloquial name for them was Know Nothings, which stemmed from their secretiveness about organisational specifics but has been used, especially retroactively, to falsely portray them as ignorant and stupid, and by extension apply that same slur to those of us who continue to carry on their legacy. That original American Party declined after 1856.

    In 1860, southern ex-Whigs mostly backed the Constitutional Union Party, They were conservative, but anti secession. Northern and pro-northern or anti States Rights Whigs mainly became Republicans, who thus quickly became a new major party.

    Some southern “border states” ex Whigs in the 1850s branded themselves as the Opposition Party or Union Party, and evolved into the Constitutional Union for the 1860 election. During the war itself they were the Union Party.

    The Democratic Party also split for that election, as Dr. Phillies alluded to. Southern Democrats ran Breckenridge for President, and swept the Southern states. Northern Democrats ran Douglas and carried only Missouri, ironically a border/slave state, although Douglas was himself an Illinois Yankee just like the Republican candidate, Lincoln – see “Lincoln Douglas debates,” which started when both ran against each other for office up in Illinois.

    Constitutional Union carried Tennessee, Kentucky and Virginia, which then still included today’s West Virginia. Lincoln won everywhere north of the Mason Dixon line and in the far Western states, which were then only California and Oregon.

    During the war, there continued to be elections. See for example https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1864_United_States_elections which has both congessional seat and presidential elector maps. Personally, I find that congressional map to be especially interesting.

    After the war, Southern Democrats reconciled back into the Democratic Party. Southern Republicans became largely extinct for the better part of a century after the end of reconstruction. They began very slowly to reemerge as northern democrats began to enforce forced integration starting with the military to certain extent in WWII, as well as in opposition to the big government New Deal / fdr agendas. That brings us back around to the history of 1948-68 which I mentioned last round. I can do some of the latter from personal memory, but that needs refreshing too now unfortunately with reading of the same sort as I’ve done and summarised here of events that happened before I was born.

    The 1964 republican party split I referred to in the comment you replied to (Mr. Flood, if the length of this comment kicks it out of hierarchy) was related to the things I wrote about here. Goldwater aligned with the views and interests of Southern conservatives like myself when I was a kid at that time (teen, 1964) while the other side of the Republican party was unhappy with his nomination and some may have I seem to recall walked out or (bringing it back to Mr. Rowlette’s point at last) disaffiliated, as I mentioned last time.

    The other event I referred was 1912, and was unrelated.

    Neither one was the split of the Democratic-Republican party of the 1820s, which I only wrote about on this round, not the one to which you replied yesterday, 24 may. What I wrote about last round was splits within the Republican party founded in 1854 which occurred in 1912 and 1964. Not splits within the Republican aka Democratic-Republican party which evolved in the 1790s that then occurred in the 1820s, which as best I understand it is what you are talking about.

    For the 1964 events I supported Goldwater as I said. But I was a teenager, albeit politically active, and still thought of myself primarily as a Democrat, and it was over 60 years ago so I need refreshing.

    Which of these incidents involved formal state party disaffiliations? That’s a matter of definition, because as you go back further in this history the methods of party organizations were far less formal and structured and much more skeletal than nowadays. By 1964 they were quite modern, but Republican parties in the deep South were quite skeletal, and a few convention delegates walking out or protesting a national presidential nomination may have constituted De facto state party disaffiliations – perhaps you or others reading know or remember better than do I?

  14. Mr. Riley, perhaps that and other matters being discussed in that 3pw discussion are within your expertise (or better memory than mine)?

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    —
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    appv
    totsop

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