Texas Nationalists Reportedly Try to Get Secession Question Onto GOP Primary Ballot

balloA group calling for Texas to secede from the United States and become an independent nation has launched an effort to get a question about independence onto next year’s Republican presidential primary ballot.

The Texas Tribune reports that the Texas Nationalist Movement has begun circulating a petition with the goal of getting 75,000 signatures by December 1, over 8,000 more than what the Texas Secretary of State’s office requires to put the question on the ballot.

The vote on whether Texas “should reassert its status as an independent nation”, in the words of the petition, would be non-binding and the state Republican party has already distanced itself from the group.

“Historically the executive committee of the Republican Party has chosen what goes on this,” spokesman Aaron Whitehead told the Tribune, “and it’s party preference that it stays that way.”

Texas was a Republic for nine years after gaining independence from Mexico before it was admitted to the Union in 1845. The state voted to secede in 1861 to join the Confederate States of America prior to the Civil War. Scholars told the Tribune that under the auspices of an 1869 Supreme Court ruling, Texas would not be able to secede from the U.S. again even if voters gave the go-ahead. (Read more from “Texas Nationalists Reportedly Try to Get Secession Question Onto GOP Primary Ballot” HERE)

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