The Green Party of Texas is the state party organization for Texas of the Green Party of the United States.

The Green Party of Texas began to organize a serious, statewide, grassroots effort in the late 1990s. Small, active Green groups existed in large cities throughout the state (particularly Houston, Dallas and Austin) before this time, but Ralph Nader's 2000 campaign helped spur the growth of the Green Party of Texas.

Ballot access was achieved in Texas by the Green Party, which allowed Ralph Nader and the names of statewide and local Green candidates to appear on the ballot alongside Democrats, Republicans, Libertarian and Independents.

The drive in 2000 was achieved using volunteers with a little help from paid petitioners, most of them Greens from other states; over 30,000 of those signatures were collected in the last two weeks alone. The goal for signatures was about 64,000 (based on the gubernatorial election of 1998, including a sizable cushion for invalid signatures); over 76,000 qualified signatures were collected. Three Green Party candidates reached the required 5 percent threshold for one statewide candidate to achieve in order to retain ballot access for 2002 (the highest was Ben Levy for State Supreme Court, who received 9.7 percent with 451,338 votes).

Texas (ⁱ/ˈtɛksəs/) (Alibamu: Teksi ) is the second most populous and the second most extensive of the 50 United States, and the most extensive state of the 48 contiguous United States. The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in East Texas. Located in the South Central United States, Texas shares an international border with the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas to the south, and borders the US states of New Mexico to the west, Oklahoma to the north, Arkansas to the northeast, and Louisiana to the east. Texas has an area of 268,820 square miles (696,200 km²), and a growing population of 25.7 million residents.

During the Spanish colonial rule, the area was officially known as the Nuevo Reino de Filipinas: La Provincia de Texas. Antonio Margil de Jesús was known to be the first person to use the name in a letter to the Viceroy of Mexico in July 20, 1716. The name was not popularly used in daily speech but often appeared in legal documents until the end of the 1800s.

A Green party or ecologist party is a formally organized political party based on the principles of Green politics. These principles usually include social justice, reliance on grassroots democracy, nonviolence, and an emphasis on environmentalism. "Greens" believe that the exercise of these principles leads to world health. The platform of a green party can run from the centre to the far-left, however most run to the centre-left, embracing social-democratic economic policies and forming coalitions with leftists.

There are distinctions between "green" parties and "Green" parties. Any party, faction, or politician may be labeled "green" if it emphasizes environmental causes. Indeed, the term may even be used as a verb: it is not uncommon to hear of "greening" a party or a candidate.

In contrast, formally organized Green parties may follow a coherent ideology that includes not only environmentalism, but often also other concerns such as social justice, consensus decision-making, and pacifism. Greens believe that these issues are inherently related to one another as a foundation for world peace. The best-known statement of the above Green values is the Four Pillars of the Green Party, adopted by the German Greens in 1979-1980 (but forsaken since). The Global Greens Charter lists six guiding principles which are ecological wisdom, social justice, participatory democracy, nonviolence, sustainability and respect for diversity.

Jill Stein (born 1950) is an American physician and candidate for President of the United States in 2012 with the Green Party of the United States. Stein was a candidate for Governor of Massachusetts in the 2002 and the 2010 gubernatorial elections. Stein is a resident of Lexington, Massachusetts and a 1979 graduate of Harvard Medical School. She serves on the boards of Greater Boston Physicians for Social Responsibility and MassVoters for Fair Elections, and has been active with the Massachusetts Coalition for Healthy Communities.

In October 2011, Stein announced her candidacy for the presidential nomination of the Green Party in the 2012 general election.

Stein advocates for the creation of a "Green New Deal", the objective of which would be to employ "every American willing and able to work" to address "climate change...[and the] converging water, soil, fisheries, forest, and fossil fuel crises" by working towards "sustainable energy, transportation and production infrastructure: clean renewable energy generation, energy efficiency, intra-city mass transit and inter-city railroads, “complete streets” that safely encourage bike and pedestrian traffic, regional food systems based on sustainable organic agriculture, and clean manufacturing of the goods needed to support this sustainable economy". The initial cost of the Green New Deal would be funded by various mechanisms, including "taxing Wall Street speculation, off shore tax havens, millionaires and multimillion dollar estates" as well as a 30% reduction in the U.S. military budget. She cites a study of the economic effects of the 1930s New Deal projects by Dr. Phillip Harvey, Professor of Law & Economics at Rutgers School of Law as academic evidence for the Green New Deal.

Kat Swift (born June 6, 1973) is a United States political activist, former co-chair of the Green Party of Texas, and spokesperson for the Green Party's National Women’s Caucus. Swift announced her intention to seek the 2008 Presidential nomination of the US Green Party at the 2004 Green Party National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She was one of the youngest candidates to seek the office in 2008, meeting the age requirement of 35-years-old only months before Election Day in 2008. In 2007, she ran for City Council, District 1 in San Antonio, Texas finishing second of three candidates with 1,630 votes for 29.48% of the total vote. On July 12, 2008 she finished third on the single ballot for the party's presidential nomination with 38 out of 532 delegate votes cast. She later endorsed the winner of the presidential nomination Cynthia McKinney. Swift was later a 2010 candidate for Bexar County Commissioner in Precinct 2.

Swift is a critic of electronic voting machines, and during a 2008 interview said: "The people must have precedence over corporations and political machines! Think about who is counting [votes] and paying for the candidates to run for office. Are they people who are acting out of duty for an egalitarian society, justice, and liberty...or are they in it for other reasons?”