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Texas ballot access requirements are amongst the worst in the country. From here:

In Texas, Nader tried to get on the ballot by collecting voter signatures, but his campaign submitted them two weeks after the May deadline. His attorneys argued the state of Texas had no legitimate reason to have different requirements for independent and third-party candidates.

Nader was required to collect at least 64,076 signatures by May 10 from registered voters who did not vote in the Democratic or Republican primaries. That equals 1% of all votes cast for president in the most recent election in Texas.

Third-party candidates needed to collect 45,540 signatures by May 24, the day Nader's campaign turned in its signatures. State officials argue the signature and time requirements were not unreasonable and could have been met with a better effort by Nader's group.

Of the 80,000 signatures Nader's campaign filed in May, a random sample by the state showed that between 56,215 and 63,374 were valid. Those numbers would have qualified Nader under the third-party access rules but not as an independent candidate.