Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/12pdf/12-71_7l48.pdf
Page Number: 44

Cite as:  570 U. S. ____ (2013) 

3 

ALITO, J., dissenting 

of our constitutional life has been . . . to leave the conduct 
of the election of its members to state laws, administered 
by  state  officers,  and  that  whenever  it  has  assumed  to 
regulate such elections it has done so by positive and clear 
statutes.”  Id., at 485 (emphasis added).1  The presumption
against pre-emption applies with full force when Congress
legislates  in  a  “field  which  the  States  have  traditionally 
occupied,”  Rice  v.  Santa Fe  Elevator  Corp.,  331  U. S.  218, 
230 (1947), and the NVRA was the first significant federal
regulation  of  voter  registration  enacted  under  the  Elec-
tions Clause since Reconstruction. 

The Court  has it exactly backwards when it  declines to 
apply  the  presumption  against  pre-emption  because  “the
federalism concerns underlying the presumption in the Su-
premacy  Clause  context  are  somewhat  weaker”  in  an  Elec-
tions  Clause  case  like  this  one.  Ante,  at  12.    To  the 
contrary, Arizona has a “ ‘compelling interest in preserving 
the integrity of its election process’ ” that the Constitution 
recognizes  and  that  the  Court’s  reading  of  the  Act  seri- 
ously undermines.  Purcell v. Gonzalez, 549 U. S. 1, 4 (2006) 
(per  curiam)  (quoting  Eu  v.  San  Francisco  County  Demo-
cratic Central Comm., 489 U. S. 214, 231 (1989)).

By  reserving  to  the  States  default  responsibility  for 
administering  federal  elections,  the  Elections  Clause 
protects  several  critical  values  that  the  Court  disregards.
First,  as  Madison  explained  in  defense  of  the  Elections
Clause  at  the  Virginia  Convention,  “[i]t  was  found  neces-

—————— 

1 The  Court  argues  that  Gradwell  is  irrelevant,  observing  that  there
was no state law directly at issue in that case, which concerned a pros- 
ecution  under  a  federal  statute.    Ante,  at  10,  n. 5.    But  the  same  is 
true of Ex parte Siebold, 100 U. S. 371 (1880), on which the Court relies 
in the very next breath.  In any event, it is hard to see why a presump-
tion  about  the  effect  of  federal  law  on  the  conduct  of  congressional
elections  should  have  less  force  when  the  federal  law  is  alleged  to
conflict  with  a  state  law.    If  anything,  one  would  expect  the  opposite 
to be true.