Texas Representative John Davis (R-Clear Lake) has introduced HB 1821, to provide for registration by party on the voter registration form. Then, no one could participate in the primary of any party unless that voter had been registered in that party for at least 30 days before the primary. The same provision would apply to participation in conventions, for parties (like the Libertarian Party) that nominate by convention.
The bill also says that no one can sign for an independent candidate, or for a new party, if that person is a registered member of a political party.
The drafters of this bill seem unaware of many legal problems in this bill, as drafted. First, the provision that members of qualified parties may not sign for an independent candidate would probably be held unconstitutional. An identical law was held unconstitutional in Arizona in federal court in 1999. The case was Campbell v Hull. Whereas the US Supreme Court has upheld laws that prohibit someone from both voting in the primary and signing for an independent, that is not the same issue. Someone who is merely registered in a party, but who didn’t vote in the primary, is not “voting twice” even under the logic of the US Supreme Court decision that upheld the primary screenout.
Second, the bill makes no provision for a party to decide for itself that it may wish to let independents vote in its primary. The US Supreme Court said in 1986 in Tashjian v Republican Party of Connecticut that any party may decide for itself whether to let independents vote in its primary.
Finally, the bill is ambiguous as to whether someone would be allowed to register into an unqualified party. Probably the bill’s author does not intend to permit this. However, courts in Colorado, Oklahoma, New York, New Jersey, and Iowa, have said that voters must be permitted to register into certain unqualified parties (those that have managed to qualify for the ballot, or qualify their nominees for the ballot, in the past).
