While many of us were relaxing over the long Labor Day weekend, the Texas Supreme Court issued a ruling that could decide some of the closest races on this year’s general election ballot.
The all-Republican court rejected a Republican effort to erase 44 Libertarian candidates from the ballot. The GOP candidates and organizations that sued to remove the Libertarians missed their deadline for taking people off the ballot, so the third-party folks will stay. Democrats, who filed their challenges on time, earlier got the courts to knock several Green Party candidates off the ballot.
The theory operating here is that Libertarian candidates siphon more votes from Republicans than from Democrats. A related bit of political folklore is that Green Party candidates take votes that would otherwise go to Democrats.
