Texas Senate District 14 Libertarian Party candidate Rock Howard has now added a blog to his campaign website. His latest entry had some interesting insight on ballot access issues in Texas:
Sadly the Green Party fell short in their efforts to get on the ballot in 2006. As a long time advocate and activist working for improved ballot access in Texas, it pains me whenever anyone makes a serious effort to get on the ballot but then falls short. Here is an interesting story behind the story.
In the last general session the Republican Party killed the bill I had drafted to improve ballot access in Texas by ending the practice of “Primary Screenout” (which is the archaic rule that says that primary voters can’t sign petitions for independents or other political parties trying to get on the ballot.) A few months after the bill (HB 1721) was killed in committee I heard the scuttlebutt that a Republican strategist had decided that the bill would help Kinky Friedman too much. (Strayhorn was not yet running as an independent at that time.)
Killing the bill did not prevent Kinky or Carol from picking up their required signatures, but it significantly impacted the Green Party efforts to get on the ballot. It should not have mattered since petition signers are allowed to sign for both an independent candidate and a political party, but apparently many of the Friedman and Strayhorn petition gathers told their signers to play it safe and not sign any other petitions for fear of possible invalidation.
So Kinky dodged the bullet sent their way by the Republicans, but then the bullet hit the Green Party 2006 ballot drive. That means there will be no Green candidates slicing up Democrat vote totals in November. It also means no love for Republicans from Libertarians since HB 1721 was the Texas LPs’ top proposal for legislative reform in 2004.
Hopefully this one will end up biting the GOP in the butt in the 2006 elections. They could have done the right thing, but chose politics as normal instead.
sucker, ʟʟᴄ