The Texas Nationalist Movement has asked a district judge to temporarily halt the printing of Republican primary ballots.
This was the most recent legal step taken by the group to have a party referendum known as “TEXIT” added to the ballot that would ask members of the Republican Party in Texas, “Should the State of Texas reassert its status as an independent nation?” according to The Texan.
The Texas Nationalist Movement (TNM) filed a motion with the Travis County District Court seeking a temporary restraining order that would prevent Texas Republican Party chair Matt Rinaldi from allowing the party to print ballots for the March 5 primary without including the referendum.
“If Rinaldi is not restrained from allowing the [Republican Party of Texas] to order the ballots, TNM will forever lose its rights to have the Referendum on the ballot, and the rights of almost 140,000 Texas voters will be crushed,” stated TNM, per KERA News.
The filing also requests that the court order an injunction that would require Rinaldi to “perform his ministerial duty” and include the referendum on the ballot.
“Ballots should not be printed until the unlawful actions of the Texas GOP and Matt Rinaldi have been properly vetted by the courts,” claimed TNM president Daniel Miller, per KERA.
The ongoing legal debate revolves around a decision by the Texas Republican Party to reject TEXIT despite TNM purportedly having the required number of signatures to get the item on the ballot.
Rinaldi wrote in an open letter to TNM that the rejection was due to a lack of timeliness in filing the signatures and concern that the “vast majority of petition signatures were invalid.”
TNM proceeded to file a petition asking the Texas Supreme Court to require the party to place the referendum on the ballot, writing that the group “filed this petition directly with the Texas Supreme Court because time is of the essence,” per The Texan.
However, the request was denied without an explanation, according to the Houston Chronicle.
Paul M. Davis, an attorney for TNM, wrote on social media that the court “[d]idn’t even want to look at the petition TNM submitted to Rinaldi to see if what we said was true.”
“Just ‘nope.’ No explanation. No nothing,” he added.
Miller vowed that the court’s decision would not be “the end of the matter.”
“We will fight to see that the law is honored and that Texans have a say on their fundamental right of self-government,” he said to KERA.
The decision from the Texas Supreme Court prompted the party to file the request for a restraining order, though it is still unclear how the district judge will rule in the case.