It may apply neutral criteria for access to the ballot, but these criteria must be justified by important public interests. Defendants do not argue that a desire to avoid chal- lenge by the rivals most popular with the voters satisfies even the least demanding standard. A plan to move the border separating Districts 1 and 3 every two years, so that Morgan always lives in a district that does not elect a representative in that cycle, would fail for the same reason. Every 10 years the cen- sus requires reapportionment of electoral districts, and it is impossible to exclude politics from the remapping. Forbidding the political branches to think about who is likely to gain from one map rather than another would be a fool's errand.
Mixed motives are inevitable.
Given Reese, however, there is nothing inevitable about redrawing residence districts frequently. Political officials change these maps not because they must do so every decade, but because they want to do so. When they act, they need a valid reason. If that is indeed the only reason, the result should not be distinguished from a law disquali- fying those three persons by name. We appreciate the norm that legislative intent does not make an otherwise-proper law invalid.