explaining that ballot access restrictions, in particular, burden two fundamental rights: “the right of individuals to associate for the advancement of political beliefs, and the right of qualified voters, regardless of their political persuasion, to cast their votes effectively”
How later courts described this case
- explaining that ballot access restrictions, in particular, burden two fundamental rights: “the right of individuals to associate for the advancement of political beliefs, and the right of qualified voters, regardless of their political persuasion, to cast their votes effectively”
- holding unconstitutional an Illinois statutory requirement that new political parties and independent candidates for elections in po *876 litical subdivisions gather more than the number of signatures required for elections for statewide office
- holding there is no rational reason to require more than 5% signatures in a smaller unit when that number of signatures would exceed 25,000 because the state’s interests were satisfied with 25,000 signatures for a statewide race
- holding that state could not justify discrepancy between high signa- ture requirements for election to local office in Chicago--more than 35,000 qualified voters--and lower requirement for statewide office --25,000 voters
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
Mr. Justice Stevens,
concurring in part and concurring in the judgment.
Placing additional names on a ballot adds to the cost of conducting elections and tends to confuse voters. The State therefore has a valid interest in limiting access to the ballot to serious candidates. If that interest is adequately served by a 25,000-signature requirement in a statewide election, the same interest cannot justify a larger requirement in a smaller election.
Nonetheless, I am not sure that the disparity evidences a violation of the Equal Protection Clause. The constitutional requirement that Illinois govern impartially would be implicated by a rule that discriminates, for example, between Socialists and Republicans or between Catholics and Protestants. But I question whether it has any application to rules prescribing different qualifications for different political offices. Rather than deciding that question, I would simply hold that legislation imposing a significant interference with access to the ballot must rest on a rational predicate. This legislative remnant is without any such support. It is either a product of a malfunction of the legislative process or merely a byproduct of this Court’s decision in Moore v. Ogilvie, 394 U. S. 814 , see post, at 190-191 (Rehnquist, J., concurring in judgment) . In either event, I believe it has deprived appellees of their liberty without the “due process of lawmaking” that the *190 Fourteenth Amendment requires. Cf. Delaware Tribal Business Committee v. Weeks, 430 U. S. 73, 98 (Stevens, J., dissenting).
For these reasons I concur in the Court’s judgment and in Parts I, II, and IV of its opinion.