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I can't speak to the intricacies of the law, but I can speak to common sense. I think this kind of law was put into place in order to force the parties to abide by the results of primaries. I.e., to prevent them from parachuting in a new candidate against the will of the people. Probably a Progressive Era thing.

That's a lot of what happened in Texas. This change was made back in the 70s where one party would run a place holder candidate in the primary and if it looked like the opposition may have a weak candidate in the General they'd let their place holder step down and they'd replace him/her with a better candidate.