SCOTX-8: Yanex Decries Signature Requiement, Says Required Show Of Support Is ‘Undemocratic’

Every Primary season, some candidate will end up saying something truly and amazingly stunning before the filing deadline even passes that will come back to haunt their campaign. For Linda Yanez, seeking Place 8 on the Texas Supreme Court, her episode came this week in the Rio Grande Guardian:

Is this undemocratic? In order to file to run for Texas Supreme Court, a candidate needs to secure the signatures of nearly 800 Texas voters from all 14 appellate court districts across the state.

13th Court of Appeals Justice Linda Yañez thinks it is, even though she is the first to collect the required signatures and the first Democrat to file the official papers for candidacy to the state’s highest court.

“When I ran for the Supreme Court in 2002 we never had to collect all these signatures. It’s a new thing,” Yañez told the Guardian, in a telephone interview from El Paso.

“Now, we have to collect around 800 signatures and pay the $3,700 fee in order to run. It’s an unbelievable burden just to get on the ballot. It’s undemocratic. We have literally had to travel all across the state in order to the signatures. And everyone has to be a registered voter.”

I can’t believe what I’m reading. Seriously. First of all, the requirement for collecting the signatures is not, as Yanez said, a “new thing.” New to her, perhaps, but it became law in 2003 with the passage of House Bill 296. And, the concept is even older. The 77th Legislature passed nearly identical legislation in 2001, but Governor Perry vetoed it. So, the legislation had already passed the House and Senate but been vetoed by the governor by the time Yanez made her first run for the court.

I could sit here and explain to you why this legislation was passed, but instead, I’ll let the Bill Analysis do that:

Requiring both signatures and a filing fee would indicate a measure of statewide support for a person’s candidacy. The 77th Legislature passed a similar bill in 2001, but this was vetoed by the governor.

H.B. 296 requires a candidate for either court who chooses to pay the filing fee to also submit a petition with 50 signatures from each of the state’s 14 court of appeals districts.

The reason for this is, obviously, to show that a judicial candidate has adequate support to run statewide. The secondary purpose, however, is to connect judicial candidates back to ordinary Texans by making them do this in all 14 districts. Why? It’s simple, really. Because they are limited in what they can say as candidates and judges by judicial ethics canon, most Texans haven’t a clue who they are and there is little interest in their elections. This process helps introduce the candidates (and even sitting judges–some of whom for the first time are having to do this as well) to the people.

Furthermore, the bill had the popular support of the Legislature. On both second and third readings, it passed by non-recorded voice votes (Second Reading at page 1134, Tx.Hse. Jrnl.; Third Reading at page 1168, Tx. Hse. Jrnl.)

I’m afraid Yanez may have stepped in it big-time with this one. It’s never good for candidates to complain about doing something that actually puts them in person-to-person contact with voters that is also state law.

For a judicial candidate, especially, to complain about the burdens of a non-controversial state law is a bit much.

Finally, since this was actually passed out of the Lege (though not signed into law) before Yanez’s first run, one would think that someone who was running and planning future runs for the high court would have paid closer attention to it. There is nothing that would have prevented her, as a former candidate, from showing up before the House Judicial Affairs or Senate State Affairs Committee back in 2003 and speaking out on this if she thought it was a burden. That’s her right and she could have worked to make changes in the law rather than complain after the fact–and act like it is something new and created just for her event though candidates in 2004 and 2006 already had to meet these requirements.

Finally, there are companies that do collect these sort of petition signatures. Not that I’m advocating that mind you, but statewide candidates and others have used them before. So, if a candidate would prefer not to actually visit the judicial districts the candidate could, in theory, hire it out.

Either way, there is simply no excuse to complain about this being a burdensome requirement. In fact, a candidate could probably collect this many signatures by visiting one or two party meetings in each of the 14 judicial districts. It’s not like they have to go door to door or anything; just 50 per district.