AUSTIN – The Republican Party of Texas is pleased to report that members of the Texas House of Representatives have made critical updates to SB 100 – a bill related to the MOVE Act and the date of the Texas Primary Election.

As has been mentioned in the last two Chairman’s Updates for March and April, the RPT has been closely following the progress of SB 100, specifically as it applies to the date of the Texas Primary Election. To give some background – the federal MOVE Act has been crafted to give our overseas military a greater amount of time to receive and cast their vote by mail. For our state to comply with the MOVE Act, there are changes mandated to the election calendar that lengthen the period of time between filing for office and election day. In the case of Texas, our best solution is to move the primary date back into April with a runoff date in June. In addition to changes mandated by the MOVE Act, the Republican National Committee has passed rules which penalize states which hold their primary elections before April and do not apportion their delegates in direct proportion to the popular vote.  Texas is such a state. Thus, should Texas keep its primary date on the first Tuesday in March, those rules would potentially take away half of the Texas delegation strength to the Republican National Convention in 2012.

Recently, SB 100 was voted out of the Texas Senate with language that set a primary date in March, rather than the RPT’s preference for an election date of the first Tuesday in April. However, the House committee on Defense & Veterans’ Affairs has offered a committee substitute moving the primary date to the RPT’s preference of the first Tuesday in April, and the substitute has been passed out of the committee by a unanimous vote! We thank our Republican legislators for being responsive to the concerns of the RPT and for listening to the sentiment of the State Republican Executive Committee who unanimously passed a resolution in support of the April Primary date at the last quarterly SREC meeting.

The Republican members of the House committee on Defense & Veterans’ Affairs are: Representatives Ralph Sheffield, Leo Berman, Dan Flynn, Jim Landtroop, Charles Perry, Connie Scott and Van Taylor. On behalf of the RPT, the State Republican Executive Committee, and all of the thousands and thousands of grassroots activists represented by our national convention delegation – we thank these Republican legislators for their responsiveness and leadership on this important bill.