IN THE

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE SEVENTH CIRCUIT

________________________

No. 08–3218

ALLAN J. STEVO,

Plaintiff‐Appellant,

v.

JOHN R. KEITH, et al., in their capacities as members of the

  Illinois State Board of Elections,

Defendants‐Appellees.

__________________________

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Central District of Illinois.

No. 08–3162—Richard Mills, Judge.

__________________________

Argued September 25, 2008—Decided October 1, 2008*

__________________________

   

Before CUDAHY, POSNER, and FLAUM, Circuit Judges.

POSNER, Circuit Judge. The plaintiff wants to run as an inde‐

pendent candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from

Illinois’s Tenth Congressional District, which encompasses

parts of Lake and Cook Counties. His petition to appear on the

November 2008 general election ballot was challenged by a lo‐

 

* The opinion is being released in typescript. A printed version will appear in

due course.
No. 08–3218                                                                                          2

cal resident because the plaintiff had failed to submit with his

petition the requisite minimum number of signatures of persons

qualified to vote in the election. That number is 5 percent of the

number of people who voted in the district in the last congres‐

sional election. 10 ILCS 5/10–3. For the Tenth Congressional Dis‐

trict, the minimum required number of valid signatures is

10,285, and the plaintiff claims that he had more than 7,200. The

Illinois State Board of Elections ruled that he had only 6,978

valid signatures; in any event he does not claim that his “more

than 7,200” reached 10,285.

The plaintiff claims that the 5 percent requirement denies

equal protection of the laws and infringes First Amendment

rights to stand for public office and to vote for the candidate of

one’s choice. Jenness v. Fortson, 403 U.S. 431, 434 (1971); Bullock

v. Carter, 405 U.S. 134, 143 (1972); James A. Gardner, “Delibera‐

tion or Tabulation? The Self‐Undermining Constitutional Archi‐

tecture of Election Campaigns,” 54 Buff. L. Rev. 1413, 1432

(2007). A candidate denied a place on the Illinois ballot can, it is

true, conduct a write‐in campaign. “State of Illinois Candidate’s

Guide 2008” 41

www.elections.il.gov/Downloads/ElectionInformation/PDF/08C

anGuide.pdf (visited Sept. 30, 2008). But that is an inferior al‐

ternative to having one’s name on the ballot. U.S. Term Limits,

Inc. v. Thornton, 514 U.S. 779, 830–31 (1995); Lubin v. Panish, 415

U.S. 709, 719 n. 5 (1974).

The district court dismissed the complaint for failure to

state a claim. The appeal relies mainly on equal protection; the

First Amendment claim is not developed.

All congressional districts must be redistricted after each

decennial census. Georgia v. Ashcroft, 539 U.S. 461, 488 n. 2

(2003); Ill. Const. art. IV § 3; 10 ILCS 76/1–76/99; Adam Cox,

“Partisan Fairness and Redistricting Politics,” 79 N.Y.U. L. Rev.

751, 752–53 (2004). And for the first election after the decennial

census Illinois requires independent candidates to obtain only
No. 08–3218                                                                                          3

5,000 valid signatures from qualified voters, rather than the 5

percent required in the other elections. 10 ILCS 5/10–3; Libertar‐

ian Party v. Rednour, 108 F.3d 768, 771 (7th Cir. 1997). In one

congressional district, the Fourth, 5,000 is more than 5 percent

of the voters in the last (2006) congressional election (5 percent

in that district is only 4,293), but in the others it is less and in the

Tenth Congressional District, with its requirement of 10,285

signatures, 5,000 is less than half of 5 percent of the votes cast in

the last election.

The average number of required signatures per district is

9,442. The Fourth, with only 4,293, is an outlier; the next lowest

is the Fifth, with 7,713. The highest is the Nineteenth, with

12,205. (These figures are computed from “Signature Require‐

ments and Forms—U.S. Representative in Congress,”

www.elections.state.il.us/Downloads/ElectionInformation/PDF/

usrep.pdf (visited Sept. 30, 2008).) Although the Supreme

Court’s reapportionment jurisdiction requires that congres‐

sional districts be of equal population, Karcher v. Daggett, 462

U.S. 725, 730–31 (1983); Wesberry v. Sanders, 376 U.S. 1, 17–18

(1964), the 5 percent rule produces different numbers in differ‐

ent districts without violating the Constitution because it is 5

percent of the number of persons who actually voted in a dis‐

trict, not 5 percent of the district‘s population.

The last decennial census was in 2000, and no Illinois con‐

gressional district was redistricted after the most recent con‐

gressional election, held in 2006. But the plaintiff argues that

there is no difference between a newly redistricted district and a

district that is unchanged since the last election, and therefore

the state’s judgment that 5,000 signatures is enough in a newly

redistricted district proves that 5 percent is too stringent a re‐

quirement in any district in which the 5 percent formula yields a

requirement of more than 5,000 signatures, such as the Tenth.

The Supreme Court has held that 5 percent is a permissible

minimum signature requirement for placing third‐party or in‐
No. 08–3218                                                                                          4

dependent candidates on the ballot, Jenness v. Fortson, supra, 403

U.S. at 439–41; Nader v. Keith, 385 F.3d 729, 733 (7th Cir. 2004),

provided that there is not only a write‐in alternative but also

other means of getting one’s candidacy before the electorate,

such as finding sponsorship by a political organization, Jenness

v. Fortson, supra, 403 U.S. at 438; Hall v. Simcox, 766 F.2d 1171,

1174 (7th Cir. 1985), and provided also that the state does not

impose “suffocating restrictions” on ballot access. Jenness v.

Fortson, supra, 403 U.S. at 438. Illinois    does not. See Nader v.

Keith, supra, 385 F.3d at 734–35; 10 ILCS 5/10–6, 5/10–8 to 5/10–

10. But the plaintiff argues that Illinois’s disparate treatment of

the two types of district shows that a 5 percent minimum is ar‐

bitrary, at least in Illinois. He is using the 5,000‐signatures pro‐

vision of the law just to show that if it is good enough in newly

redistricted districts, it is good enough in all districts.

The state defends the disparity in treatment between the

two types of district on the ground that it is impossible to calcu‐

late a percentage of the votes in the previous election in a redis‐

tricted district because by definition there was no previous elec‐

tion in that district—the district didn’t exist. But vote totals are

reported for each precinct, and, if a district’s boundaries are

changed, the votes cast in the previous election in the precincts

within the new boundaries can be added up and the sum will

be the total number of votes that were cast in that area in the

last election. Indiana does that in determining, when a district is

redistricted, the number of votes that was cast in the last elec‐

tion in the area embraced by the new district; that number is

then multiplied by the required percentage of valid signatures

to determine whether the candidate has the signatures of

enough qualified voters to get on the ballot. See Indiana Code

§§ 3–8–6–3(a), 12(b)(7), (c), (d).

But this suit fails even if Indiana’s procedure for determin‐

ing the previous turnout in the area enclosed by new district

boundaries is entirely feasible (as we’ll assume, though district
No. 08–3218                                                                                          5

boundaries sometimes slice through precincts and the turnout

in each slice could not be determined with precision or perhaps

at all). Redistricting is a disorienting event for voters and can‐

didates alike, since it changes the electorate, usually with an eye

to improving the electoral prospects of the majority party in the

legislature doing the redistricting. Gaffney v. Cummings, 412 U.S.

735, 753–54 (1973); Shaw v. Reno, 509 U.S. 630, 661 (1993) (White,

J., dissenting); La Porte County Republican Central Committee v.

Board of Commissioners, 43 F.3d 1126, 1130 (7th Cir. 1994). Can‐

didates and voters alike must adjust to the new political land‐

scape. It is plausible that it would be more difficult for candi‐

dates to obtain signatures in such circumstances, and so the re‐

quired number is reduced.

The method that Illinois uses to reduce the required num‐

ber is crude, however, because districts vary in the number of

people who voted in the last election. Hence the anomaly of the

district in which the requirement of 5,000 signatures is more

demanding than the 5 percent requirement, making it more dif‐

ficult for candidates to obtain the required number of signa‐

tures in election years in which the district has been redistricted

even though the objective of requiring “only” 5,000 signatures

in new districts is to make the process of qualifying for a place

on the ballot less difficult (albeit it is more difficult in only that

one district). But the plaintiff’s proposal—a requirement in

every election of just 5,000 signatures—is as or more arbitrary,

since, other things being equal, it is easier to obtain a specified

number of signatures the larger the turnout in the district in the

preceding election, and hence the smaller the percentage of

qualified voters whom the candidate is required to sign up to

reach the minimum number and so get onto the ballot. There

are more fish in the pond, so it is easier to catch the required

number.

Granted, other things may not be equal. The more signa‐

tures that are required, the greater the cost, and the difference
No. 08–3218                                                                                          6

may be important for a minor‐party or independent candidate.

Hall v. Simcox, supra, 766 F.2d at 1174. But at best this point

makes the choice between number and percentage a standoff; it

does not justify invalidating the percentage approach.

Suppose the Indiana approach, whereby disaggregation of

votes to the precinct level in the preceding election enables the

same percentage to be required in districts that have recently

been redistricted and districts that have not been, is indeed a

compellingly superior approach; nevertheless the plaintiff

would not have standing to urge its adoption. The Indiana ap‐

proach is a solution to the problem of determining previous

voter turnout after a redistricting, and the Tenth Congressional

District is not a newly redistricted district. So the plaintiff is

forced to argue that a uniform rule requiring 5,000 signatures (or

a slightly higher number, provided it is below the number of

valid signatures he was able to obtain) is so far superior to the

present system that the Constitution requires that it be substi‐

tuted for it. That is wrong, given the disparity in voter turnout

in the different districts. We have just seen that requiring a

number rather than a percentage may well be a bad feature of

Illinois’s treatment of elections in recently redistricted districts;

the plaintiff urges us to impose that quite possibly inferior

method in all elections, rather than, as at present, in just the

elections in newly redistricted districts.

We warned in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, 472

F.3d 949, 954 (7th Cir. 2007), affirmed, 128 S. Ct. 1610 (2008),

against federal judicial micromanagement of state regulation of

elections. See also Clingman v. Beaver, 544 U.S. 581, 593 (2005);

Burdick v. Takushi, 504 U.S. 428, 432–34 (1992); Storer v. Brown,

415 U.S. 724, 729–30 (1974). But the appeal in this case fails on a

more basic level: the change the plaintiff asks us to make in the

Illinois voting system might well make that system more arbi‐

trary than it already is.

AFFIRMED.