The Socialist Party has notified the Texas Secretary of State that it will try to qualify for the Texas ballot in 2016. Texas has a unique law that requires unqualified parties to tell the state if they intend to qualify. The petition cannot start until March 9, 2016.
Have you heard the expression, “too plain for argument?”
Texas requires political parties to nominate by primary or convention, with smaller parties and new parties nominating by convention.
The convention nominating process is concurrent with the primary nominating process. The modicum of support for new parties is established by attendance at their precinct conventions.
A voter may participate in the nominating activities of only one party. If you vote in a primary, you can’t participate in the convention of another party, and vice versa.
Texas does permit a new party that fails to achieve the modicum of support at the precinct convetion, to file a supplementary petition. To be eligible to sign the petition, you may not have participated in the nominating activity of other parties.
The precinct conventions for convention-nominating parties are on March 8. The supplementary petition may not be circulated until the day after the convention, which is March 9, 2016
The deadline for the supplementary petition is based on the date of the precinct conventions, so the one week gap between the primary and the conventions for small parties has no major effect.
It is technically possible to affiliate with a political party now, but I don’t know how it would be counted for qualification purposes.
When the Texas Democratic Party had the Texas Double Cross, where national convention delegates was based on both the primary and precinct conventions, there was massive attendance at the precinct conventions. The precinct conventions at the time (2008) were held on primary election night, and by law may not start until after everyone has voted. There were long delays getting people signed in at the precinct convention. So the law was changed to permit voters to sign up (online) prior to the convention. The law is applicable to all parties (Chapter 162 of the Election Code).
Now that the DNC has nixed the Double Cross, I don’t know whether the pre-registration process will be used or not, but it is available.
Every election is NEW.
EQUAL ballot access tests for ALL individual candidates.
The SCOTUS robot party hacks are totally EVIL and corrupt with all of their EVIL corrupt UNEQUAL ballot access cases since 1968.
The media and law school profs are too evil stupid to detect basic election stuff.
Texas has a long history of third parties overcoming ballot access obstacles erected by Republicans and Democrats in the state legislature. In the 1960 and 1970s the Peace and Freedom, People’s and Socialist Workers won ballot listing as did the Libertarians and Greens since 2000. In 1972 La Raza Unida Party won local elections in six border counties and 24 percent of the votes for Governor. In the largest city Houston 42 percent are Hispanic and 25 percent foreign born. Since 2000 the Democrats have not even had a candidate on the ballot in many statewide races, so the Libertarisn or Green candidate captured 20 or 30 percent of the vote. Only 5 percent of the vote in one statewide race is enough to qualify a party to retain its ballot listing for the next election cycle. Once the Socialists get ballot listing, Texas will become a new kind of “Red State”‘for the Drmocrats to worry about.
The Socialist Workers Party did successfully petition in Texas under the existing law in 1972, 1974, 1976, and 1978. But the Peace & Freedom Party never got on the Texas ballot. La Raza Unida successfully petitioned in Texas in 1972 and got enough votes to remain on for 1974, 1976, and 1978. In November 1978 it went off the ballot, but continued to get on the ballot in certain counties.