Now that the 3-judge U.S. District Court in San Antonio has informally told the major parties that their primaries will be no earlier than May 29, and possibly later, the Republican Party is planning to change the tradition that precinct conventions are held the evening of primary day. The party is working on a plan to hold precinct conventions, and county conventions, before the primary. See this message from the party leadership.
ALL of the robot party hack stuff became super-dangerous in 1861 or 1931 — take your pick of years.
P.R. and nonpartisan App.V.
NO primaries, NO caucuses, NO conventions
The Sun will continue to rise over a REAL Democracy regime.
If the precinct conventions are decoupled from the primary, there is no reason not to hold them March 6*, the original primary date; and hold the county/senatorial district conventions on the 3rd Saturday following, March 24.
These conventions have nothing to do with the nominations for the general election; they are all about party business, including selecting delegates to the state convention. Senatorial district conventions are actually just sub-county conventions for larger counties.
Precinct and county chairs are elected at the primary, but they do not take office until 20 days after the runoff (they have to be elected by majority). The precinct chair is the temporary chair of the precinct convention.
*Last legislative session, flexibility in the scheduling of the precinct conventions was increased, so that they can be held on any date through the Sunday following the primary. One reason for this was that the precinct chair was often involved in conducting the primary, and so either could not attend the precinct convention or would be late.
Texas also permits political parties to consolidate election precincts for their primaries and “precinct” conventions. Since they consolidate different precincts for the primary and the runoff; it would be reasonable to have a different consolidation for a standalone precinct convention.
If the Republicans wanted to conduct a straw poll at their precinct conventions that would be fine. The Democrats already conduct a binding poll at their precinct conventions which is used to apportion some of the national delegates – Clinton won the primary in 2008, but lost the separate poll taken at the precinct conventions.
The convention-nominating parties could also hold their precinct conventions on the date set in state law, the 2nd Tuesday in March (March 13, 2012). The precinct conventions do not nominate anyone, but do select delegates to subsequent conventions where nominations are made. The collection period for the supplementary petition for qualifying new parties begins the day after the precinct conventions.
Assuming the court orders interim legislative and congressional maps in the next few days, then the filing for all offices could run through say March 12. This is a reasonable amount of time for people to decide whether they want to run in the new districts, or stick with a local office.
It would give election officials 77 days before the primary (including sending overseas ballots 45 days).
It would also permit candidates for nomination by convention to file before the convention. Ordinarily, their deadline is a couple of months before the conventions, but such a long period is not needed when there are no ballots to prepare and send out in advance. In practice, candidates may withdraw their candidacy, and the party may extend the filing period up to just before the convention. For primary-nominating parties, if a candidate withdraws, there is only a few days of extended filing, so as to not disrupt ballot preparation.
But the real reason for the early filing is to prevent sore-losers in a primary from running as a candidate of a minor party. But if the nominations by the minor parties occurs before that for the major parties, there is no risk.
And if there aren’t maps ready in the next few days, they can just be jettisoned from the May 29 primary.
A June 26 primary is simply too late. Assuming 70 days between the primary and the runoff, the runoff would be September 4.
Independent candidates have 30 days after the runoff to collect signatures, or October 4. Allow election officials 14 days to collect signatures and you are at October 18.
70 days to prepare for the general election and the general election is December 27.
Even a May 29 election would result in a November 29 general election. But election officials may be able to squeeze 3 weeks out of the schedule, a lot easier than they can squeeze 7 weeks.
So if election maps are not ready in the next week or two, the only thing to do is to conduct those elections as special elections in November.
Once again Bush v. Vera 1996 ??? — to cause the CONSTITUTION to be ENFORCED — regardless of ANY act or omission of a MORON State government.
Still waiting for nonstop Fed indictments for the nonstop violations of civil rights by the gerrymander morons – i.e. the right to vote.