Texas could vote on referendum to secede from the United States this spring

Leaders of the Texas Nationalist Movement (TNM) — which openly calls for the Lone Star State to secede from the United States and become an independent nation again — appear to have surpassed the threshold to put a secession ballot initiative on the 2024 Republican primary ballot this March.

Newsweek reported Friday that TNM president Daniel Miller delivered 139,456 signatures to the Republican Party of Texas' (RPT) headquarters in favor of a March 2024 ballot referendum dubbed "Texit" (named after the UK's Brexit referendum in 2016). Texas law only requires "five percent of the total vote received by all candidates for governor in the party's most recent gubernatorial general primary election." And in 2022, there were 1,954,172 ballots cast in Texas' Republican gubernatorial primary. By this standard, TNM only needed 97,709 signatures to get its referendum on the ballot.

"We have submitted well over the needed signatures to be on the ballot this March," Miller stated. "Federal overreach and legislative blood baths have been plaguing Texas politics for far too long. Truth be told, the sheer number of signatures proves that people are hungry for states to exercise their constitutional rights, but nothing would have happened unless we acted first."

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TNM argues that Article 1, Section 2 of the Texas constitution — which states that Texans "have at all times the inalienable right to alter, reform or abolish their government in such manner as they may think expedient" — gives voters the right to decide the secession question. The group also states on the FAQ section of its website that a vote to secede is not an act of treason or declaration of war against the United States, and wagers that the US government would not deploy the military to prevent Texas from seceding.

"What would the justification be for any actions taken against Texans whose sole crime was voting for self-determination in a fair, free, and open referendum? When exactly would this military intervention occur?" TNM's website reads. "Would they do it before a vote on Texit to prevent the people having their say? Would they wait until after the results of the vote were tallied and the results announced in favor of independence? Or would they wait until after Texas began the process of extracting itself from the federal system and began asserting its role as a nation among nations?"

For a referendum to pass, it only needs a vote of 50% plus one. And Texans have a pattern of voting in favor of ballot referendums. In the 2023 election, 13 of 14 referendums on the ballot were approved according to Ballotpedia.

While TNM's referendum appears to have surpassed the signature threshold, it has not yet been approved to appear on the GOP primary ballot. And even if it passed, the referendum is not legally binding, meaning lawmakers could choose to ignore it.

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