The state’s high court Saturday rejected an effort by state and national Republicans to remove 44 Libertarian Party candidates from the ballot for failing to pay candidate filing fees.

The Texas Supreme Court said in a 12-page opinion that it could not grant the declaration of ineligibility sought by Republicans because the particular statute they invoked regarding the applications of the Libertarian candidates did not apply to them because the Libertarian Party nominates candidates through a convention.

“We’re pleased the court did the right thing,” Whitney Bilyeu, chair of Libertarian Party of Texas, said of the ruling.

The court said the ruling did not mean the filing fee requirement was “unenforceable.” Had the Republicans filed a petition of ineligibility by the Aug. 21 deadline, “the challenged candidates could potentially have been removed from the ballot,” according to the opinion.

[...]

Bilyeu said the real fight is taking place in federal court, where the party is challenging the candidate filing fee as unconstitutional, and in state court, where a separate challenge by Libertarian candidates is pending at the [Texas] 14th Court of Appeals.

Although the result in this instance may be that candidates who failed to pay the required filing fee will nevertheless appear on the ballot, this Court cannot deviate from the text of the law by subjecting the Libertarian candidates’ applications to challenges not authorized by the ElectionCode. The Legislature established detailed rules for ballot access and for challenges to candidates, and courts must carefully apply these rules based on the statutory text chosen by the Legislature. The available mechanism for seeking the Libertarians’ removal from the ballot for failure to pay the filing fee was a declaration of ineligibility. However, the deadline by which such a declaration can achieve the removal of candidates from the ballot has passed. The Election Code does not permit the relators to bypass that deadline by belatedly challenging the Libertarians’ applications. The petition for writ of mandamus is denied.

2018 Libertarian Senatorial nominee Neal Dikeman of Texas Free Press

While the Republicans (and the Democrats in Davis) tried to argue the law equalized the situation between 3rd Party and Major party nominees, it in fact did the opposite. Unlike the primary filing fees paid by the Republican and Democratic candidates—which are paid to their own party--to be on the party's primary ballot for nomination (ostensibly to both reduce the number of primary candidates and defray part of the state funded primary costs), the HB2504 law required 3rd Party candidates to pay equivalent dollar amounts of fees directly to state or county coffers, and to do so to be on the general election ballot, which the Republicans and Democrats are not charged to be on—because of course, the 3rd Party conventions by law are privately funded, and the Republicans had zero desire to write an equal law that would effectively fund the party they were trying to impact. (emphasis Dikeman's)

Just before the clock ran out for challenges in Wisconsin, the Democrats filed a challenge on our petitions, saying that the address listed for Angela Walker was a false address.

They didn't seem to realize that Angela moved during the petitioning window, we disclosed the fact to the Elections Commission, and they told us to clear it up when filing the petitions...which we did.

Following the rules and adhering to instructions didn't seem to matter to the Elections Commission, because they were deadlocked on whether to put us on the ballot.  The votes against putting us on the ballot came exclusively from the Democrats on the commission, who made broad insinuations that we were lying about Angela's address and didn't even allow us to introduce correcting information during the hearing.

If there was ever an example of political bigotry, that was it.

So now we're going to court.  And here's where you come in.

We're asking you to make a donation today to help cover these new legal fees.
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We already have to raise money to cover the $15,000 retainer to defend our petitions in Pennsylvania.  Now we have the new burden of defending our petitions in Wisconsin.

Elliott Scheirman, a Libertarian running against Rep. Dan Crenshaw in Houston’s 2nd Congressional District, said the GOP suit is a “testament to the substantial growth and support” that the Libertarian Party has gained and proof that Republicans feel threatened.

“You might notice that they omitted targeting Libertarians from races without a Republican running,” Scheirman said. “This demonstrates a cherry-picked tactic to remove competition for themselves but not for Democrats…. The Green Party candidates had every right to be on the ballot, too, and Texans deserve a right to choose who they support.”