In re Francis

In In re Francis, 186 S.W.3d 534, 541 (Tex. 2006) the Court held that the trial court must allow a candidate to cure defects a party chair overlooked and approved. The Election Code does not require exclusion from the ballot as a mandatory remedy when a curable defect exists. Francis, 186 S.W.3d at 536. In Francis, the candidate was permitted to correct petitions containing 95 invalid signatures because the error had not been discovered by party officials. 186 S.W.3d at 537. "Party chairs are not required to be lawyers, nor are they required to be perfect. They have a very limited time to review thousands of papers during the window in which they must be filed. In such circumstances, they do not need the added burden that their own minor mistakes (when looking for the minor mistakes of others) might destroy a candidate's public career." Id. at 542.