U.S. District Court Judge Robert Pitman will hear Collier v Nelson, w.d., 1:26cv-1574, on Tuesday, July 28, at 3 p.m. This is the case in which independent candidate Michael Collier, who is running for Lieutenant Governor of Texas, seeks injunctive relief to get on the ballot. The law says that an independent candidate can’t begin petitioning until after the run-off primary, if that particular race happens to have had a run-off primary. There was a run-off primary for Lieutenant Governor. That means Collier was given only 30 days to collect 81,030 valid signatures. No independent candidate for statewide office in Texas has ever managed to qualify in the compressed time limits.
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/73470050/collier-v-nelson/
docket
Suck it
Texas should use an Open Primary like in Louisiana or special elections in Texas. At the last US Senate special election in Texas in 1993, there were six independents, and Libertarian, Socialist Worker, and Populist candidates.
Does Louisiana still have a jungle primary? Did Texas in 1993 use a system whereby if someone had a majority in the first round there would be no second round?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmwQVJNCWHQ
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7vYEe23FEoE
@I, Wanda,
Louisiana: Yes. The legislature did away with it for congressional elections, but after the legislature redistricted the congressional districts this year, they restored the Open Primary for congressional elections, because they did not have time for a primary. They did go ahead and hold the partisan primary for the US Senate. Both the Democratic and Republican primaries required a primary runoff.
Texas: Yes. In the 1957 Texas special election, no runoff was held. The Legislature changed the law to require a runoff for special senate elections. This was used for 1961 and 1993. In 1993, the two leading candidates in the primary were practically tied 29.00% to 29.00% (or 29.003% to 28.998%) or a margin of 1 in 20,664 votes. If they didn’t have a runoff, they would probably still be counting votes.
Isn’t Louisiana just for this year only, and then no more jungle primary?
What would have happened in Texas if a candidate had over 50%?
@I, Wanda,
Louisiana will continue to use the Open Primary for state elections and legislative elections. The legislators are used to running under that system, which has been in place their entire political life. Louisiana had switched to closed partisan primaries and then switched back. When they were debating that bill, one representative wondered how weird it to be to talking to a voter, and then find out that he couldn’t vote for the candidate because he was registered in the other party, and the candidate would say, “OK thanks, would you vote for me in six weeks?”
A senator related the story of when his wife had voted in a partisan primary. Louisiana had voting machines where the election clerk set a switch to present the correct candidates. She didn’t recognize any of the candidates. The officious official assured it was the Republican candidates, just like for your husband. It turned out that she was a Democrat. Even though she was a lady, she told the clerk in most unladylike terms, that if she was a Republican, he could go to (somewhere bad). Flustered, the clerk escorted her to a different machine. When she asked what they would do with the first machine, he said that they would use it for the next Republican.
The excuse for congressional elections was that if a runoff was required, the representative elect would get the cruddy offices and bad committee assignments because representatives from other states would grab all the plums in December.
In Texas, the statute reads that a majority is required for election. A runoff is conditioned on there not being a majority in the primary. In Texas a candidate may withdraw from the runoff (for a special election or a partisan primary). If that happens, the runoff is cancelled. In the case of the Democratic Lieutenant Governor race, Vikki Goodwin had 48.0% of the vote in a 3-way primary. The runner-up should have as a matter of courtesy and economy withdrawn. Had he done so, Michael Collier could have begun collecting signatures 55 days earlier. See dictionary for caprice n.
Republican leaning voters who had skipped the primary so they could sign the Collier petition, knowing that they would still have a chance to vote in a Senate runoff were unable to sign a Collier petition based on a bizarre hypothetical that they might vote in the Democratic runoff. The Democratic runoff had about 1/4 of the turnout of the Democratic primary (2.1 million vs. 550 thousand). It is unlikely that even a minuscule share of those 550 thousand had not voted in the Democratic primary. There was simply little risk that a petition signer would later vote in the Democratic runoff.
Thanks. So in TX 1993, if one of the candidates had at least 50%+1 in the initial round, he or she would have been elected with no runoff, correct?