In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit ____________

No. 05-4355

DAVID LEE,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

JOHN KEITH, in his official capacity as

Chairman of the Illinois State Board of Elections,

JESSE SMART, in his official capacity as

Vice-Chairman of the Illinois State Board of Elections,

WANDA REDNOUR, in her official capacity as a member

of the Illinois State Board of Elections, et al.,

Defendants-Appellees.

____________

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Central District of Illinois.

No. 04 C 3042—Jeanne E. Scott, Judge.

____________

ARGUED JUNE 9, 2006—DECIDED SEPTEMBER 18, 2006

____________

Before RIPPLE, MANION, and SYKES, Circuit Judges.

SYKES, Circuit Judge. In 1975 and 1979 Illinois adopted

two significant changes to its ballot access laws for independent candidates. First, the deadline for independents to

file nominating petitions was pushed back from 92 days

before the November general election to the same deadline

that applies to partisan candidates—92 days before the

March primary, or 323 days before the November general
2 No. 05-4355

election. Second, the signature requirement for independent

candidates was doubled, from 5% of the vote in the last

general election for the office sought to 10%. These changes

had a dramatic impact. Before 1975, independent candidates for the state legislature qualified for the ballot

occasionally, though not frequently. Since 1980, however—the year following the second of these changes—not

a single independent candidate for state legislative office

has qualified for ballot access.

David Lee wanted to run as an independent candidate for

the Illinois State Senate in 2004. When it became clear to

Lee that he could not muster the required number of

signatures by the deadline so distant from the general

election, he abandoned his campaign bid and filed this

lawsuit against the members of the Illinois State Board

of Elections to challenge the ballot access restrictions. He

asserted that the restrictions violated his First and Fourteenth Amendment rights as a candidate and voter

by erecting an unconstitutionally high barrier to ballot

access for independent candidates running for the state

legislature. The district court upheld the challenged

statutes.

We reverse. In combination, the ballot access requirements for independent legislative candidates in Illinois—the early filing deadline, the 10% signature requirement, and the additional statutory restriction that disqualifies anyone who signs an independent candidate’s nominating petition from voting in the primary—operate to unconstitutionally burden the freedom of political association

guaranteed by the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

Ballot access barriers this high—they are the most restrictive in the nation and have effectively eliminated independent legislative candidacies from the Illinois political scene

for a quarter of a century—are not sustainable based on the

state’s asserted interest in deterring party splintering,

factionalism, and frivolous candidacies.
No. 05-4355 3

I. Background

The relevant facts are not in dispute. Illinois law requires

an independent candidate for the General Assembly—the

State Senate and House of Representatives—to qualify for

the general election ballot by collecting the signatures of

registered voters in his or her legislative district equal to at

least 10% of the number of votes cast in that district during

the last general election. See 10 ILL. COMP. STAT. 5/10-3

(2004). Anyone who signs an independent’s petition is

disqualified from voting in the primary election. See 10 ILL.

COMP. STAT. 5/7-43(c). Aspiring independent candidates

must file their nominating petitions with the required

number of valid signatures by the same deadline that

applies to partisan candidates: 92 days before the primary,

which is 323 days before the general election. See 10 ILL.

COMP. STAT. 5/7-12(1). This early deadline for independent

candidates was adopted in 1975, see 1975 Session Laws,

Act 79-1100 at 3400; the prior deadline was 92 days before

the general election. All signatures must be collected within

the 90 days immediately preceding the filing deadline. See

10 ILL. COMP. STAT. 5/10-4.

Prior to 1979 when the 10% requirement was adopted, see

1979 Session Laws, Act 81-155 at 816, Illinois law required

independent candidates to collect registered voter signatures equal to only 5% of the votes cast in the previous

general election. The record reflects that from 1956 through

1978, 16 independent General Assembly candidates qualified for the general election ballot. But after Illinois doubled

the signature requirement to 10% in 1979, only three

independents qualified in the 1980 election, and no independent legislative candidate has qualified for the ballot

since then.

General Assembly candidates who are not affiliated with

an established political party may also qualify for the

general election ballot by filing as “new party” candidates.

A new party candidate must collect signatures from registered voters in his or her district totaling at least 5% of the
4 No. 05-4355

1 A handful of states did not elect state legislators in 2004, so the

dates and numbers we cite for filing deadlines and signature

requirements are based on the laws that governed those states’

most recent legislative elections, either in 2002 or 2003.

number of votes cast in that district during the last general

election and must submit these signatures 134 days before

the general election. See 10 ILL. COMP. STAT. 5/10-2; 10 ILL.

COMP. STAT. 5/10-6. Voters who sign the new party candidate’s petition must affirmatively declare their intention to

form a new party. See 10 ILL. COMP. STAT. 5/10-2, ¶ 4. As

with independent candidates, new party candidates must

collect signatures within the 90 days immediately preceding

the filing deadline. See 10 ILL. COMP. STAT. 5/10-4. Other

than having the required number of registered voters sign

nominating petitions and declare their intention to form a

new party, candidates running for General Assembly under

a new party banner need not establish any formal party

machinery or field a slate of candidates for any additional

offices. But if a new party candidate wins the general

election, he or she must organize the party’s members to

hold a primary election in order to appear on subsequent

general election ballots for reelection. See Vasquez v. Mun.

Officers Electoral Bd., 450 N.E.2d 1379, 1381-82 (Ill. App.

Ct. 1983).

By way of comparison to the other 49 states, Illinois’s

deadline for independent legislative candidates to file

signed nominating petitions—323 days before the general

election—was by far the earliest for the 2004 election.

Ohio’s March 1, 2004 deadline was the next earliest, but

even that was two-and-a-half months later than Illinois’s

December 15, 2003 cutoff. Thirty-nine states set their filing

deadlines at June 1 of the election year or later.1

Illinois’s signature requirement—at least as it applied to

Lee during the 2004 election—was likewise more stringent

than any other state’s. The easiest comparison is with the
No. 05-4355 5

27 states that, like Illinois, require independent candidates

to collect signatures from registered voters equal to a

specified percentage of the votes cast in the previous

general election. Among this group of 28 states, Illinois’s

10% signature requirement stands alone: it is the only

one that exceeds 5%.

Some states require independent candidates to collect

signatures equal to a percentage of all registered voters

in the district. Georgia and South Carolina have the most

demanding requirements among this group, requiring

signatures equal to 5% of the number of registered voters in

the district. Five percent of all registered voters may

be more or less than 10% of all votes cast in the preceding general election, so a useful comparison with Illinois’s

laws requires a bit of arithmetic. The record shows Lee

needed to collect 6995 valid signatures to qualify for the

2004 general election ballot for the 44th Senate District. We

do not know how many voters were registered in Lee’s

district from September to December 2003 (the 90-day

window for Lee to collect signatures), but as of May 2005,

there were 144,970 registered voters. No one suggests this

number of total registered voters changed in any significant

way between 2003 and 2005, so we use the 2005 number for

our calculations.

The preliminary calculation is as follows: 6995 (the

number of signatures Lee was required to collect) divided by

144,970 (the number of total registered voters) equals .048

(rounded off). So for comparison purposes, Lee needed to

collect signatures from 4.8% of all registered voters in his

district. But any realistic analysis must also account for the

fact that voters who sign an independent’s petition cannot

vote in the primary election. In Illinois’s 44th Senate

District, 21,459 voters participated in the 2004 primary

election for State Senate. Based on the sensible assumption

that these voters would not have wanted to disqualify

themselves from primary participation by signing an
6 No. 05-4355

2 Although the defendants-appellees are the individual members

of the Illinois State Board of Elections, for ease of reference

we will refer to them collectively as “Illinois.”

independent’s petition, we can subtract them from the

eligible pool of petition signers. Accordingly, 144,970 minus

the 21,459 primary voters leaves 123,511; 6995 divided by

123,511 equals about .057, or 5.7%. The result of all this

number crunching is that when measured as an approximate percentage of eligible registered voters, Illinois’s

signature requirement for Lee in 2004 was 5.7%.

After realizing he would not be able to collect the required

6995 signatures by the mid-December deadline, Lee quit his

bid for the State Senate and challenged the Illinois ballot

access statutes by filing suit against the members of the

Illinois State Board of Elections.2

 The parties filed crossmotions for summary judgment, and the district court

entered judgment for the defendants, relying largely on this

court’s opinion in Stevenson v. State Board of Elections,

794 F.2d 1176 (7th Cir. 1986). Lee appeals.

II. Discussion

We review the district court’s entry of summary judgment

de novo and draw all reasonable inferences in favor of the

nonmoving parties. Scaife v. Cook County, 466 F.3d 735,

738-39 (7th Cir. 2006). Summary judgment should

be entered only where there is no genuine dispute as to any

material fact and the moving party is entitled to judgment

as a matter of law. FED. R. CIV. P. 56(c); Scaife, 466 F.3d at

739.

We note as a preliminary matter that the parties do not

argue mootness; we are independently satisfied that we

have jurisdiction, even though Lee abandoned his bid
No. 05-4355 7

for the Illinois State Senate before the November 2004

election and that election has been decided. Storer v.

Brown, 415 U.S. 724, 737 n.8 (1974) (“The . . . election is

long over . . . but this case is not moot, since the issues

properly presented, and their effects on independent

candidacies, will persist as the . . . statutes are applied in

future elections. This is, therefore, a case where the

controversy is capable of repetition, yet evading review.”)

(internal quotation marks and citations omitted); Nader

v. Keith, 385 F.3d 729, 735 (7th Cir. 2004) (“There would be

no question of [the candidate’s] standing to seek [an

injunction placing his name on the ballot] in advance of

the submission or even collection of any petitions.”); Tobin

for Governor v. Ill. State Bd. of Elections, 268 F.3d 517, 528-

29 (7th Cir. 2001) (“The cases that traditionally have fallen

within the ‘capable of repetition’ exception have involved

challenges to the validity of statutory provisions that will

continue to operate past the election in question.”). The

statutes Lee challenges thwarted his bid to appear on the

ballot and continue to restrict potential independent

candidacies for the Illinois General Assembly. We proceed

to the merits of the claim.

The First Amendment, as incorporated against the

states by the Fourteenth Amendment, “protects the right of

citizens ‘to band together in promoting among the electorate

candidates who espouse their political views.’ ” Clingman v.

Beaver, 544 U.S. 581, 586 (2005) (quoting Cal. Democratic

Party v. Jones, 530 U.S. 567, 574 (2000)). Accordingly, “the

impact of candidate eligibility requirements on voters

implicates basic constitutional rights.” Anderson v.

Celebrezze, 460 U.S. 780, 786 (1983). “The exclusion of

candidates . . . burdens voters’ freedom of association,

because an election campaign is an effective platform for

the expression of views on the issues of the day, and a

candidate serves as a rallying point for like-minded citizens.” Id. at 787-88. Also, because “voters can assert their
8 No. 05-4355

preferences only through candidates or parties or both[,] .

. . [t]he right to vote is ‘heavily burdened’ if that vote may

be cast only for major-party candidates at a time when

other parties or other candidates are ‘clamoring for a place

on the ballot.’ ” Id. at 787 (quoting Lubin v. Panish, 415

U.S. 709, 716 (1974)).

Ballot access laws thus “place burdens on . . . 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.

Both of these rights, of course, rank among our most

precious freedoms.” Williams v. Rhodes, 393 U.S. 23, 30

(1968). Illinois’s filing deadline and signature requirements

must be addressed together and their constitutionality

determined on the basis of their combined effect on Lee’s

political association rights as a voter and candidate. Nader,

385 F.3d at 735 (citing Wood v. Meadows, 207 F.3d 708, 711

(4th Cir. 2000)).

Ballot access restrictions are evaluated under a flexible

standard that weighs the “ ‘character and magnitude of the

asserted injury to the rights protected by the First and

Fourteenth Amendments that the plaintiff seeks to vindicate’ against ‘the precise interests put forward by the

State as justifications for the burden imposed by its rule,’

taking into consideration ‘the extent to which those interests make it necessary to burden the plaintiff’s rights.’ ”

Burdick v. Takushi, 504 U.S. 428, 434 (1992) (quoting

Anderson, 460 U.S. at 789). “Under this standard, the

rigorousness of [the court’s] inquiry into the propriety of a

state election law depends upon the extent to which

a challenged regulation burdens First and Fourteenth

Amendment rights.” Burdick, 504 U.S. at 434. Restrictions

that “severely” burden the exercise of constitutional rights

must be “narrowly drawn to advance a state interest of

compelling importance.” Id. (quoting Norman v. Reed, 502

U.S. 279, 289 (1992)). But “reasonable, nondiscriminatory
No. 05-4355 9

restrictions” that impose less substantial burdens are

generally justified by the state’s “important regulatory

interests.” Id.

Whether measured by comparison to the ballot access

requirements in the other 49 states or by the stifling effect

they have had on independent legislative candidacies

since their inception, the combined effect of Illinois’s ballot

access requirements for independent General Assembly

candidates falls on the “severe” end of this sliding scale.

The mid-December filing deadline—with the general

election still nearly 11 months away—is by far the earliest

deadline in the nation. The next earliest filing date is

Ohio’s; its March 1 deadline falls about two-and-a-half

months later than Illinois’s and substantially precedes the

deadlines set by the great majority of states, 39 of which do

not require independents to file until June 1 of the election

year or later.

Illinois’s signature requirement also exceeds those of

all other states. Of the states that require independents

to collect signatures equal to a specified percentage of votes

cast in the last general election, Illinois is the only state

that requires more than 5%. As it applied to Lee during the

2004 election, Illinois’s 10% signature requirement even

outstrips the demands of the two states (Georgia and South

Carolina) that require candidates to collect signatures from

5% of all registered voters. When converted to a percentage

of registered voters eligible to sign Lee’s petition, the

Illinois requirement was 5.7%. That represents a 14%

increase over Georgia’s and South Carolina’s 5% requirements and gives Illinois the distinction of having both the

most demanding signature collection requirement and by

far the earliest filing deadline of all 50 states.

Unsurprisingly, the unrivaled severity of these ballot

access restrictions has had the effect of thoroughly excluding independent General Assembly candidates from Illi-
10 No. 05-4355

nois’s ballots. Three independents did manage to qualify for

the ballot during the first election governed by the increased signature requirement. But in the 12 election cycles

since 1980, not a single independent legislative candidate

has qualified. The Supreme Court has held that ballot

access history is an important factor in determining

whether restrictions impermissibly burden the freedom

of political association: “Past experience will be a helpful, if

not always unerring, guide: it will be one thing if independent candidates have qualified with some regularity and

quite a different matter if they have not.” Storer, 415 U.S.

at 742. The “inevitable question for judgment” is whether “a

reasonably diligent independent candidate [could] be

expected to satisfy the signature requirements, or will it be

only rarely that the unaffiliated candidate will succeed in

getting on the ballot?” Id. Not only are unaffiliated legislative candidacies rare in Illinois, in the last 25 years they

have been nonexistent.

Because Illinois’s ballot access requirements combine to

severely burden the rights of candidates and voters to

launch and support independent candidacies, they must

be “narrowly drawn” to advance a “compelling” state

interest. Burdick, 504 U.S. at 434; see also Timmons v.

Twin Cities Area New Party, 520 U.S. 349, 358 (1997).

Illinois asserts two primary interests it says are served

by its ballot access restrictions: preventing intraparty feuds

and excessive factionalism from invading the general election and assuring that candidates whose names

appear on the general election ballot have a significant

modicum of support.

There is no question that states have a strong interest

in confining party infighting to the primary election and

reserving the general election for major political struggles.

See Timmons, 520 U.S. at 367; Burdick, 504 U.S. at 439.

States also have a strong interest in preventing voter
No. 05-4355 11

confusion by limiting ballot access to serious candidates

who can demonstrate at least some level of political viability. See Anderson, 460 U.S. at 788 n.9; Jenness v. Fortson,

403 U.S. 431, 442 (1971). We need not decide whether these

interests can be considered “compelling” because Illinois

has not demonstrated that its early filing deadline and high

signature requirement, taken together, are narrowly drawn

to the advancement of these interests.

Illinois devoted much of its brief to arguing that we need

not even engage in the foregoing analysis and should reject

Lee’s challenge—to the filing deadline at least—as a matter

of stare decisis based on Stevenson v. State Board of

Elections, 794 F.2d at 1177. It is true that Stevenson

rejected a challenge to Illinois’s early filing deadline for

independents, but that decision does not control the outcome here for at least three reasons. First, the plaintiffs in

Stevenson challenged only the early filing deadline; they did

not ask this court to consider the deadline in conjunction

with Illinois’s demanding signature requirement and its

corresponding rule that disqualifies anyone who signs an

independent’s nominating petition from voting in the

primary. This distinction is important because we are

required to evaluate challenged ballot access restrictions

together, not individually, and assess their combined effect

on voters’ and candidates’ political association rights.

Nader, 385 F.3d at 735. An early filing deadline coupled

with a less burdensome signature requirement may well

pass constitutional muster, depending on their combined

effect on political association rights.

Second, as we have noted, the Supreme Court has

instructed us to give significant weight to the historical

impact of ballot access restrictions. Storer, 415 U.S. at 742.

Twenty years have passed since Stevenson, and in that time

not a single independent General Assembly candidate has

qualified for the general election ballot. Given the impor-
12 No. 05-4355

tance of the historical record to the constitutional equation,

two decades of complete exclusion of independents places

this case in a markedly different context from that in

Stevenson.

Finally, and relatedly, we note that this court’s opinion in

Stevenson summarily adopted the district court’s reasoning,

adding for emphasis that the facts at issue in the case

“epitomiz[ed] factionalism and intraparty squabbling. It is

exactly this type of chaos that a state may constitutionally

regulate in the interest of an orderly and informed electoral

process.” Stevenson, 794 F.2d at 1177. The facts were these:

former Illinois Senator Adlai E. Stevenson, the lead plaintiff in Stevenson, won his party’s nomination for governor in

the 1986 primary but then defected from his party’s slate

and wanted to run as an independent because of his

dissatisfaction with the party’s nominee for lieutenant

governor. Stevenson v. State Bd. of Elections, 638 F. Supp.

547, 548-49 (N.D. Ill. 1986). The early filing deadline for

independents precluded an independent run and Stevenson

sued. The district court rejected his challenge to the early

filing deadline on the strength of the state’s interest in

promoting political stability and discouraging party splintering and unrestrained factionalism. Id. at 553. This court

summarily affirmed. Stevenson, 794 F.2d at 1177.

In contrast to Stevenson, the context here carries no

baggage of intraparty feuding. Illinois does not suggest that

Lee is anything other than a bona fide independent who

wants nothing to do with any political party. Stevenson is

thus distinguishable, for all the foregoing reasons. The very

early mid-December filing deadline for independents must

be evaluated together with the other ballot access restrictions that apply to independents in Illinois: the 10%

signature requirement and the provision that disqualifies

any voter who signs an independent’s petition from voting

in the primary.
No. 05-4355 13

We conclude that these ballot access requirements, in

combination, severely burden First and Fourteenth Amendment rights and are not narrowly drawn to advance Illinois’s interest in avoiding the political instability of party

splintering and excessive factionalism and the ballot clutter

of frivolous candidacies. We do not question that these are

important state interests; they have long been recognized as

such. Timmons, 520 U.S. at 366-67; Burdick, 504 U.S. at

439; Anderson, 460 U.S. at 788 n.9; Storer, 415 U.S. at 736.

But the Supreme Court has also observed that the interest

in political stability “does not permit a State to completely

insulate the two-party system from minor parties’ or

independent candidates’ competition and influence,”

Timmons, 520 U.S. at 366-67, and that is effectively what

Illinois has done.

Illinois maintains that its 10% signature requirement

is not a significant burden on independent candidates; its

argument in this regard centers on Jenness, 403 U.S. at

442. In Jenness, the Supreme Court rejected a challenge to

Georgia’s requirement that independent candidates submit signatures from 5% of registered voters. The Court’s

holding in Jenness was based in part on the absence of any

further restrictions on independent candidates in Georgia;

the Court specifically noted that although Georgia’s 5%

requirement was “somewhat higher than the percentage

of support required to be shown in many States as a

condition for ballot position, . . . this is balanced by the fact

that Georgia has imposed no arbitrary restrictions whatever

upon the eligibility of any registered voter to sign as many

nominating petitions as he wishes.” Id. (footnote omitted).

Unlike the Georgia statutory scheme approved in Jenness,

Illinois law does not permit unlimited signing of nominating

petitions. See 10 ILL. COMP.STAT. 5/7-43 (voters who sign an

independent’s petition may not vote in the primary election); 10 ILL. COMP. STAT. 5/7-10 (voters may not sign

petitions for candidates of more than one party). Disqualify-
14 No. 05-4355

ing a voter who signs an independent candidate’s nominating petition from voting in the primary election severely

burdens the voting and political association rights of the

petition signer. Only the most committed supporters of an

independent candidate would be willing to sign on condition

of primary disenfranchisement, especially so early in the

political season.

As we have noted, when Illinois’s restrictions on petition signers are taken into account, the signature requirement for Lee in 2004 was 5.7% of eligible registered voters,

a 14% increase over the 5% figure approved in Jenness.

Moreover, we note that Georgia law provided a signature

collection period twice as long as Illinois’s (180 days) and a

filing deadline six months closer to the general election

(mid-June). Jenness, 403 U.S. at 433-34. These are material

differences. If the Court was at its outer limit in approving

Georgia’s 5% requirement in Jenness, then Illinois’s more

stringent signature requirement and the additional burdens

of a shorter collection period and much earlier filing

deadline place the Illinois scheme outside any safe harbor

Jenness might be construed to have created.

In any event, Illinois’s assertion that the 10% signature

requirement for independents is not burdensome is simply inconsistent with the state’s political history. Prior to

the enactment of the 10% requirement, independent

legislative candidates qualified for the ballot with some

regularity. Since 1980, the year following the imposition

of the 10% requirement, the combined effect of the state’s

ballot access restrictions has been to completely eliminate

competition from independent legislative candidacies.

Finally, Illinois contends that even if its early filing

deadline and hefty signature requirement combine to

impose too great a burden on independent candidates, Lee’s

claim must fail because he could qualify for the ballot by

meeting the less onerous requirements for “new party”
No. 05-4355 15

candidates. As we have noted, Illinois law allows candidates

to form a new political party and appear on the November

ballot if they collect signatures from registered voters equal

to 5% of the votes cast at the last general election and file

those signatures 134 days before the general election. See

10 ILL. COMP. STAT. 5/10-2, ¶ 2 (5% signature requirement);

10 ILL. COMP. STAT. 5/10-6 (filing deadline 134 days before

general election). Illinois also has a “sore loser” provision—not at issue here—that bars partisan primary losers

from entering the general election as newly minted new

party candidates. See 10 ILL. COMP. STAT. 5/10-2, ¶12.

We disagree that the new party option operates as a

sort of constitutional safety valve for independent candidates. It is true that Lee could access the ballot by launching the “David Lee Party,” declare his candidacy the party’s

sole objective, and make an initial appearance on the

November ballot without establishing any official

party machinery. See Stevenson, 794 F.2d at 1179

(Easterbrook, J., concurring). But a sham “party” formed

solely for the purpose of a single candidate’s election is good

for one election only. Illinois law requires that a successful

new party candidate must organize his or her party’s

members and hold a nominating primary contest when the

time comes for reelection. See Vasquez, 450 N.E.2d at 1381-

82. This forces the new party candidate and his or her

supporters to associate as a political party even though

their true intention is to advance an independent candidacy.

In addition, voters who sign a new party candidate’s

nominating petitions must declare their intention to form a

new political party. 10 ILL. COMP. STAT. 5/10-2. Running

under a new party banner thus forces an independent

candidate such as Lee to “consider himself a party man,

surrendering his independent status,” and obliges Lee’s

supporters to “giv[e] up [their] ties with another party or

sacrific[e] [their] own independent status, even though
16 No. 05-4355

[their] possible interest in the new party centers around a

particular candidate for a particular office.” Storer, 415 U.S.

at 745-46. The Supreme Court has observed that the

compelled partisan association inherent in the new party

route to ballot access makes it an inadequate substitute for

independent candidates: “political party and the independent candidate approaches to political activity are entirely

different and neither is a satisfactory substitute for the

other.” Id. at 745. Independent candidates and their

supporters are entitled to maintain their independent

status; for true independents, the new party option does not

provide an acceptable alternative means of accessing the

ballot.

Accordingly, we hold that the ballot access restrictions

Illinois places on independent General Assembly candidates—the early filing deadline and the 10% signature

requirement, together with the corresponding restriction

disqualifying an independent candidate’s petition signers

from voting in the primary—combine to severely burden

Lee’s First and Fourteenth Amendment rights as a candidate and voter. We also conclude that Illinois has not

demonstrated the combined restrictions are narrowly drawn

to advance the state’s interest in minimizing

party splintering, excessive factionalism, and ballot clutter.

We do not presume to suggest a new ballot access scheme

that will pass constitutional muster; Illinois can make its

own judgment about how to remedy its ballot access laws.

We leave that task to the political branches of the state

government.

The judgment of the district court is REVERSED and the

case is REMANDED for entry of judgment for the plaintiff,

David Lee.
No. 05-4355 17

A true Copy:

Teste: 

 ________________________________

Clerk of the United States Court of

Appeals for the Seventh Circuit 

USCA-02-C-0072—9-18-06