On September 21, Texas filed this brief in Collier v Howden, w.d., 1:26cv-1574. This is the lawsuit in which Michael Collier, an independent candidate for Lieutenant Governor, sued to overturn the law that said he needed 81,030 valid signatures to be collected in only 30 days. The Texas brief claims the lawsuit is moot. The brief doesn’t even mention the U.S. Supreme Court decision Moore v Ogilvie, which said that constitutional ballot access cases are not moot just because the election is over. Nor does the brief mention Kucinich v Texas Democratic Party, a 2009 decision of the Fifth Circuit which held that a Texas ballot access case brought by a candidate who had been denied a spot on a presidential primary ballot was not moot just because the primary was over.
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/73470050/collier-v-nelson/
DOCKET
The defendants filed their reply on October 5.
Incidentally, two candidates have filed as write-ins for Lieutenant Governor. In Texas, ballots are modified if there are declared write-in candidates for an office. If there are no declared write-in candidates for an office, a voter can not write-in a name. A list of write-in candidates is posted in each voting booth, and included in the packet sent to mail voters.
Texas can not claim that they make it harder for write-in candidates to be elected. Write-in candidates must file with the Texas Ethics Commission (the Texas agency for campaign finance reporting) and can be challenged for not being eligible. For all purposes they are equivalent to on-ballot independent candidates, but are not:
(1) Required to file a statement of intent in December of the year before the election.
(2) Prevented from collecting signatures until up to five months later.
(3) Required to collect signatures in as few as 30 days.
(4) Required to collect 81,030 signatures for statewide office. (for write-in candidates it is 5000 signatures, the same as primary candidates)
(5) Petitions are not subject to the primary screen-out.
(6) The filing deadline is in August, not June.
(7) May pay a filing fee as an alternative to a petition.
(8) The sore loser restriction only applies to primary candidates for the same office.