Texas Representative Robert Alonzo (D-Dallas) has introduced HB 246. It would move primary elections from early March to early February, in all election years. Because the date of the Texas primary is tied to the deadline for petitions for both new political parties and for independent candidates (for office other than president) to submit petitions, those deadlines would become even earlier.

Existing law puts the new party deadline in late May, and the non-presidential independent candidate deadline in early May. If the bill is passed, those deadlines would be in April. That would give Texas the 2nd earliest petition deadline for new parties (except for states in which new parties must nominate by primary) in the nation. Only New Mexico, which has an early April deadline for new parties, would be earlier (again, except for states in which new parties nominate by primary).

The bill would also move the date on which independent candidates (other than president) must file a declaration of candidacy from January of the election year, to December of the year before the election. In some years, depending on the calendar, that deadline would even be in late November.

Virtually all states are having budget problems. This situation may provide an opening for activists to suggest that state legislatures replace ballot access petitions with filing fees. Canada and Great Britain depend on filing fees, rather than difficult petition requirements, to regulate access to the ballot. And in the U.S., almost two-thirds of the states already depend mostly on filing fees, not mandatory petitions, to regulate access to primary ballots.

Fiscal considerations ought to support this idea. Election administrators must expend resources to handle petitions, especially if state law requires that all petitions be checked. On the other hand, filing fees not only cost nothing to administer, they add to government revenue.

Of course, past U.S. Supreme Court precedents require states to leave petition alternatives in the law. Also, of course, it is bad policy for the filing fees to be exorbitant.

States that already use filing fees to regulate independent candidate access to the general election ballot are Louisiana, Florida (but not for president), Oklahoma (but not for president), and Colorado (president only).

On December 8, two Minnesota state legislators said they will introduce a bill to provide for run-offs in statewide general elections, when the margin between the two candidates is less than one-half of 1%. See this story. The legislators did not mention using Instant-Runoff. The article points out that a run-off would cost several million dollars for election administrators.

The proposal is intrinsically unwise. Its authors seem not to have considered the point that an election might end up with a very narrow margin approximating one-half of 1%. In that case, a recount would be needed to see if the person who got the most votes really had a few votes more than that one-half of 1% margin, or a few votes under it. Furthermore, there is also the possibility that a run-off could also end up being ultra-close.