This time it was Socratic Gadfly who tweeted me with the news: The seven Republican senators on the Texas Senate's Committee on State Affairs approved HB 2504 yesterday.

The two Democrats had more important business on other committees or something, as they are listed as Absent on the report. One of them is part-time Democrat Eddie Lucio of Brownsville.

Ballot Access News reports that the committee heard testimony from only three witnesses:

I'll try to find out which Green testified. It would be quite interesting if it were katija gruene, who like me has not been active with the Greens in recent years. kat, however, has testified against Rep. Drew Springer's similar bills in previous legislative sessions. The difference this time around would be the amendment tacked on last week, granting ballot access to parties that have received 2% of the vote in any statewide race in any of the last five state elections.

In these final days of the 86th Texas Legislature (phew, got it right that time!), Thursday the 16th is scheduled date for the review of HB 2504 in the Senate Committee on State Affairs. Attention on this bill has now gone beyond Texas: possible Green presidential candidate Howie Hawkins has been sending out pleas to sign this petition or call senators. The petition apparently sends a message to all 31 senators.

This morning I gave Sen. Borris Miles's Austin office a call and spoke to an otherwise well-informed staffer who told me he hadn't really seen the issue from the perspective that allowing more choices in elections improves turnout and enhances democracy. I doubt that it means Miles will vote for HB 2504 as amended, let alone be the lone Democrat in the Senate to do so, but a constituent can dream.

For those keeping score, the Texas Senate still comprises 19 Republicans and 12 Democrats. One of those Democrats, Eddie Lucio of Brownsville, has become notorious for voting with the Republicans on culture-war issues among others.

I have yet to find any new information on whether the Libertarian Party of Texas are considering launching a court challenge if the bill becomes law. As of last week's Chronicle piece, LPTX still opposes charging fees, mostly since the fees are set up to pay for the state's and counties' facilitating of primary elections...which the Libertarians and Greens don't have in this state.

​Stay Tooned. There will be further updates as we continue to follow the progress of HB 2504.

Dude, I should be checking Ballot Access News more often. PDiddie sent several old-guard Harris County Greens a psst! by email this morning, linking to his new post concerning the progress of HB 2504 in the current 86th Texas Legislature (not the 92nd as I mistakenly wrote yesterday.)

The bill passed the House on a mostly party-line vote, 77-57, with five reps absent, and the Speaker not voting. Absent a major filibuster or a classic Dan Patrick Calendar Clusterfuck, this bill should sail through the Senate and get a signature from Governor Abbott.

In brief, HB 2504 allows candidates from convention parties (i.e., those that do not hold primary elections) to pay the same filing fees that candidates from primary parties do. In lieu of the fees, convention candidates may submit petition signatures, just as primary candidates currently may.

As if that weren't enough of a gift, another Republican's amendment to the bill, as passed by the House, reduces the criterion for retaining ballot access from 5% of the vote in a statewide race to 2%. Not in the next election, but in any of the previous five. Guess what? In 2014 and 2016, Green candidates crossed that 2% threshold in three four-way races. Since 2010, in races that the Democrats sat out, at least one Green has earned 5% or better, some scoring as high as 10%.

As Naomi Klein might say, This Changes Everything.

UPDATE: See PDiddie's comment below. Rep. Middleton has withdrawn HB 4416 from the current session, but she may reintroduce it in 2021 if re-elected next November. Still, we'll leave this entry up as a reminder of the obstacles that minor parties still face in Texas.

​*****

No, that headline is not an exaggeration. The Republicans attack with vote suppression; the Democrats with limiting ballot access. Oddly enough, the author of the democracy-killing mini-bill we're discussing today is Geanie Morrison, an 11-term Republican from Victoria.

One silver lining to this unemployment is that it's easier to call legislators' offices during business hours. I seldom make those calls, preferring to work by email or through one of the "clicktivism" mailing lists I'm on. Today, I called my state representative, Shawn Thierry of HD146, to express my strong opposition to House Bill 4416. If you're neither D nor R, I advise you to do the same ASAP; the session ends in three weeks.

​Here is where you can look up your representative's contact information.

The text of HB 4416 is short and not-so-sweet:

It does not amend Subsection (a), which stipulates that, in order to get on the ballot in the first place, convention parties like the Greens and Libertarians must submit a list of precinct convention attendees totaling 1% of the vote-count in the last gubernatorial election. They hardly need to modify Subsection (a), since the number of votes cast governor jumped from 4.7 million in 2014 to more that 8.3 million in 2018.

The headline says it all: GPTX did not get the required number of petition signatures. That just means that it's time to begin getting the infrastructure in place for a successful petition drive in 2020.

If you signed it this year, thank you. If you voted in a primary and thus could sign it, please consider NOT voting in a primary in 2020. And spread the word.

We're just going to take candidates' "Progressive" self-descriptions at face value, despite any misgivings we may have expressed about these candidates progressive credentials. None of the identifiably progressive candidates won their races outright, but some will appear in the runoffs on 22 May. Others will have to be content with participation medals.

Obligatory/Reflexive Reminder: If you skipped the primaries (or even if you didn't), you can still help with the Green Party's Ballot Access Petition Drive. Down the petition sheet (PDF), print it out on legal-size paper, and collect signatures from primary non-voters around you.

Primary abstainers may also attend the Green Party's precinct and county conventions, 13 and 17 March respectively. Location information is still not confirmed, so for now I recommend just making your way to the Midtown Bar & Grill, 415 West Gray Avenue, on Tuesday night.

That word "Looms" in the headline is the verb, not the noun. If there is a deadline for filing looms, as in the tool for weaving, I'm not aware of it. And why candidates would want to file looms in the first place is beyond me.

If you're a hopeless wonk like me and are curious about who's running, I can't reveal too much at this point, mostly because I don't know much. However, it is a matter of public knowledge that these two Harris County Greens intend to run for office in 2018:

• Janis (Jan) Richards for governor, and
• Joshua (JosH) Darr for US House in TX-2.

The filing deadline for partisan candidates is this coming Monday, 11 December. If you read DBC Green Blog on the regular, you should know this stuff. If you have any intention of running but haven't started the process yet:

1. go to txgreens.org
2. download and print the form
3. get it notarized, and
4. submit it to the proper Party officers: county co-chair for district races within a single county, state co-chair for all others.

​
A Tale of Two Strategies
Jan has filed to run as a Green. That means that her viability as a candidate depends upon the Green Party of Texas collecting the required number of signatures for the party to regain ballot access.

In case you aren't aware or have forgotten, those signatures must be collected from

• registered Texas voters
• who did not vote in any party primaries or sign any other party's ballot access petition
• in the 75-day period following the precinct caucuses on 13 March.

The required number of valid signatures statewide is 1% of the total vote count in the 2014 gubernatorial race—just over 47,000. GPTX will have until Memorial Day to collect, get notarized, and submit the whole pile.

JosH is filing to run as an independent candidate. In order for his name to appear on the November 2018 ballot, he needs to collect and submit just 500 signatures from residents of his district who are registered voters who have not voted in a party primary in 2018. There is no restriction against signatures from voters who have signed a party's or another independent candidate's petition. The petitioning deadline for independent candidates is 21 June.

Although US House District 2 lies entirely within Harris County, JosH must both file with and submit his petition to the Texas Secretary of State's office. Along with his petition, he must also attest that, at least for 2018, he is not a member of any political party, recognized by the state or not. For what it's worth, if JosH gets on the ballot and no Green candidates file in TX-2, as a longtime Green he will still most likely have the Green Party's endorsement.

You may recall that, at a Green-sponsored candidate workshop a couple of months ago, a few candidates showed up and announced their intention to run as independents. We should know by next week whether those folks actually filed. Watch this space and txgreens.org for updates.

Brief Introductions
Jan and JosH don't have websites yet to introduce themselves. After the filing deadline, I plan to be involved in creating sites for both of them. Meanwhile, here is some useful information.

Jan came to the Greens just last year as a disappointed Sandernista, after Senator Sanders's was mathematically eliminated from the Democratic Party nomination. She is an even more hopeless wonk than Yours Truly, with an interest in organizing at the precinct level  and targeting precincts in Harris County that are likely to produce votes for Greens and Progressives. She went to high school in Highland Park, Illinois, with a certain Jill Stein. She speaks fluent Russian.

JosH was active with HCGP in the early '00s, serving a term or two as treasurer (one of only three people ever to have held that position in HCGP, as he recently reminded me). After several years of sporadic attendance at meetings, he got active again in 2014 and ran for the TX-2 seat as a Green last year. For a while, he held a union organizing job, then a job delivering seminars in Total Quality Management; in the latter capacity, he made presentations at HCGP meetings to help with improving various Party processes. Oh yeah, he has a campaign Facebook page.

North Carolina Did What?
For those of us who worked to get Ralph Nader on state ballots in 2000, one persistent story was that North Carolina had some of the most prohibitive ballot access requirements in the United States. That remained the case right through last year's election, when the Stein/Baraka Green Party ticket won more than 12,000 write-in votes in the Tarheel State.

I am ecstatic to report, for those who have not yet heard, that North Carolina has relaxed its criteria! It didn't even require lengthy, tedious, expensive litigation: Last week the Republican-led Legislature overturned the Democratic governor's veto of Senate Bill 656. Maybe the Republicans in both chambers were thinking strategically, buying into the conventional wisdom that Greens on the ballot will steal votes from the Democrats and restore the governor's mansion to the Republicans—who, after all, own it by divine right.

I am less ecstatic to report that my native state of Oklahoma is still the biggest stick in the proverbial red-clay mud, making third-party ballot lines nigh unobtainable. I still don't know how the Libertarians managed it.

​In other news, Texas's ballot access law still sux. (See Section 181.005, currently on page 621 of the 914-page Texas Election Code PDF.)

The Green Party of Texas held its first Candidate Development Workshop of the 2017-18 electoral cycle this past weekend at the downtown Dallas Public Library. I extend megakudos to those who coordinated the event, especially state co-chair Laura Palmer, longtime avatar of Texas Greenery katija assana gruene, and the Dallas County Greens' secretary Joy Vidheecharoen. Among other contributions, Joy provided tasty vegan vittles.

In several ways, the workshop went remarkably well, and it will likely serve as a template for workshops in other parts of Texas. Several individuals, whether they had run for office previously or not, got some great information about the big picture and finer points of the process.

For me, the gathering was a refreshing antidote to the bitter taste left by June's GPTX state meeting. I emerged feeling better about calling myself a Green, proudly talking in we terms about the future of the Party.

Sadly, the good vibes I brought home from Dallas were blown away by the news from Las Vegas, after first being buffeted by the shock of the Spanish government's violent crackdown on Catalan demonstrators. As heavy as my heart is this morning, however, I feel obliged to post my impressions from the weekend as I said I would.

They did it! And we helped.

The Illinois Green Party has received official notification that its candidates will appear on the general election ballot this November. Last Monday, the party submitted petition sheets with more than 50,000 signatures to the Secretary of State's office in Springfield, enough to survive a challenge from either of the two established parties. Assuming that Jill Stein wins the nomination, her name will appear on the ballot in her native state.

By "we," I mean my beloved partner Kayleen and I. She went to Chicago for the final week of the petition drive. I planted the idea in her mind in the first place and bought her a round-trip ticket on Amtrak. It was not a difficult decision: She was not working at the time, and she loves Chicago.