Green Party On Texas Ballot (For Now)

The Green Party is back on the Texas November ballot -- at least for now. The Texas Supreme Court has stayed the order of a District Court judge that had denied them a position on the ballot. But the move may only be temporary. The court is still going to hear the case that Democrats have brought to keep the Green Party off the ballot.

The Texas Democratic Party, which claims to be in favor of more democracy, is fighting to keep the Greens off the ballot because they believe the Green Party make take some votes that would otherwise go to Democratic candidates. They believe some progressives may vote for the Green Party because of their progressivism, and the Texas Democrats, who are only slightly to the left of the Republicans, would like to have those votes.

The Democrats are claiming that the Green Party violated campaign laws when collecting the over 90,000 petition signatures that got them on the ballot. It is now known that some Texas Republicans donated money to help the Greens get on the ballot. The problem is that, in an effort to hide their involvement, they funneled the money through a corporation.

Texas law makes it illegal for a corporation to donate money to a political campaign. The question now before the Supreme Court is whether donating money for the gathering of signatures to get a party on the ballot constitutes a donation to a political campaign or not. The Green Party says it does not, while the Democrats say it does.

For myself, I think the law was aimed at preventing corporations from giving huge sums to individual political campaigns (and thus having a candidate that owes them something). A general effort to get a political party on the ballot is different, and no individual candidate need feel any obligation because of that.

The sad part of this whole story is that over 90,000 Texas voters are being ignored. They did nothing wrong. They just signed a petition declaring their wish for the Green Party to be on the ballot (about twice as many signatures as needed). Are we going to ignore the wishes of these voters because the Democrats and Republicans may be involved in a close race?

But for now we'll just have to wait to see how the Texas Supreme Court interprets the law against corporate donations to campaigns. It could go either way.