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APRIL 23, 2005:
ELECTIONS COMMITTEE TO INCLUDE LIBERTARIANS IN CODE RE-WRITE
HCR44 TO BE AMENDED TO INCLUDE LIBERTARIANS
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Patrick Dixon, Libertarian Party State Chair: 512-771-3936 chair@lptexas.org
Wes Benedict, LPT Executive Director: 512-442-4910 director@lptexas.org
Rock Howard, LPT Legislative Advisor, 512-296-4476, rockmh@austin.rr.com
Kris Overstreet, LPT Media Coordinator: 936-685-4992 cell 936-425-6523
media@lptexas.org
“The re-write of our election code must not exclude the representation of independent and non-partisan voters,” says Libertarian Party of Texas state chair Patrick Dixon in regards to a bill before the house elections committee.
A resolution before the House Elections Committee will be substituted with a version that includes a representative of the Libertarian Party in the proposed commission to be tasked with rewriting the Texas Election Code. The committee substitute will be put forward by Rep. Rafeal Anchia of Dallas and has the blessing of Rep. Mary Denny of Flower Mound, the committee chair and author of the resolution.
“We are pleased that Rep Denny supports our inclusion on the code re-write. Her public statement of support gives confidence that this amendment will go through,” said Dixon. “We look forward to Rep Anchia’s amendment.”
The resolution calls for the Lt. Governor and the House Speaker to create a commission to update and modernize the Texas Election Code, a process that was last done in1985. The intent is to clarify the code, remove references to outdated voting mechanisms and to square the code with a variety of recent federal legislation and judicial decisions pertaining to elections.
Testimony on HCR 44 was heard on April 13th and included testimony from Robert “Rock” Howard who is the Legislative Advisor for the Libertarian Party of Texas. His key point was that several sections of the code specifically pertain to non-primary political parties and independent candidates and that the proposed commission would not include anyone to represent their concerns. Chairman Denny then agreed on the spot that a Libertarian Party representative should be included. Subsequently Pat Dixon, Chair of the Libertarian Party of Texas, contacted the leadership of the Green and Constitution Parties of Texas, as well as the political action group Independent Texans and all expressed their willingness to have the Libertarian Party represent their interests on the commission.
Election reform has been a major focus of the Libertarian Party’s legislative efforts this session. Besides providing extensive comments on a variety of bills and working with several legislators to improve proposed legislation, Libertarians drafted a bill to end the practice of “Primary Screenout” which prevents primary voters from signing petitions that would add new political parties to the general election ballot. Since 1971 seven states have dropped primary screenout provisions leaving Texas as the only state that still uses it. Rep. Todd Baxter of Austin filed HB 1721 on the behalf of the Libertarian Party after Rep. Terry Keel of Austin helped secure the draft language for the bill. Rep. Mark Strama of Austin signed on as joint author of HB 1721. Rep. Keel and Rep. Suzanna Hupp of Lampasas have also signed as co-authors. HB 1721 will be heard before the House Elections Committee on April 27th.
Interestingly HB 1721 would not immediately help the Libertarian Party since they are already on the ballot for 2006 and therefore do not need to repeat their highly successful petition drive of 2004. The immediate beneficiary of the bill would be the independent campaign for Governor by Kinky Friedman. However the Friedman campaign has expressed no interest in supporting the bill or getting involved with legislative efforts to improve the election process in Texas.
The Libertarian Party currently has over 600 elected and appointed officials working to make government operate in a frugal, effective and above board manner in accordance with the limits imposed by federal and state constitutions.
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