The Democratic Party recently persuaded a state judge (who as chance would have it is himself a Democrat) to bar all Green Party candidates from the November ballot, including Deb Shafto who would have competed in the race for governor against Bill White, Rick Perry and Libertarian Kathie Glass. Judge John Dietz agreed with the Democratic Party that the fact that a Republican-funded nonprofit corporation, Missouri-based Take Initiative America, indirectly provided most of the more than 92,000 signatures submitted by the Greens was sufficient grounds for blocking the party from participating in the fall.
Since corporations can (and do) provide funding for both the Democratic and Republican March precinct conventions and June statewide conventions as well as for party overhead and operating costs, it seems questionable to conclude that they cannot fund signature collection (which, under Texas law, is merely an extension of the March precinct conventions). In fact, Dietz’s decision would appear to be more the result of his disgust with the reality that this donation was orchestrated by out-of-state Republicans with the goal of siphoning off votes from a White candidacy in order to improve Perry’s chances of victory. While without a doubt duplicitous, this behavior at the same time would not appear to be a clear-cut violation of Texas law.
It is quite reasonable for the Democratic Party to object to the manner in which Republicans have attempted to use the Green Party as a pawn in a larger political game, and one can also understand why for strategic political reasons they want to remove Green competitors from the ballot (in particular Shafto from the gubernatorial race to boost White’s chances). However, if Dietz’s ruling is upheld by the Texas Supreme Court, Texas voters (including the more than 92,000 Texans who wanted for themselves or others to have the option of voting for Green Party candidates) will have one less alternative in over a dozen federal, state and local races in the fall.
It is also important to remember, that while the funding for the Green Party signature collection effort came from Republicans, the actual Green Party candidates such as Deb Shafto, Herb Gonzales, Edward Lindsay and Kat Swift are not Republicans in Greens clothing, but bona fide liberals with a very progressive policy platform.
In order to hopefully reduce the probability of similar incidents in the future, come January, both Democratic and Republican state legislators should consider introducing legislation to reduce the considerable barriers to ballot access in Texas. Our state is widely considered to possess some of the most restrictive ballot access legislation in the United States, and some of the current barriers could be lowered to a more optimal level to allow credible political organizations to achieve ballot access without the need of corporate funding while at the same time insure that the ballot does not become overly crowded with fringe candidates.
Mark P. Jones is a Baker Institute Rice Scholar and professor and chair of the Department of Political Science at Rice University.