Opinion ID: 194744
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Burden on Associational Interests

Text: 17 We next consider the burdensomeness of Maine's electoral scheme. Like all such schemes, Maine's ballot-access restrictions inevitably affect[] at least to some degree the individual's right to vote and his right to associate with others for political ends. Anderson, 460 U.S. at 788. After carefully examining the effects of Maine's nomination procedures, the district court concluded that the challenged ballot-access requirements were neither inappropriate to their purposes nor unconstitutionally burdensome. We agree. As the district court noted, the levels of electoral support Party candidates are required to demonstrate in order to get on the Party's primary ballot are not high: The record shows that there are approximately 876,000 registered voters in Maine. In Maine there are two Congressional seats, 35 state senate seats, and 151 state representative seats. If each electoral division has an equal number of voters, then each Congres- sional district would have approximately 438,000 voters, each state senate district would have approximately 25,000 voters, and each state representative district would have approximately 5,800 voters. The requirements for primary petition signatures for these three districts are 1,000, 100 and 25, re- spectively. Therefore, the numbers [of Party members' signatures] that an aspiring Liber- tarian candidate for each of these positions would need amount to 0.22%, 0.4%, and 0.43%, respectively, of the registered voters in each district. 799 F. Supp. at 4. We endorse the district court's view that these signature requirements indeed are modest in numerical terms. Compare, e.g., American Party, 415 U.S. at 783 (upholding requirement that 1% of voters in last gubernatorial election must 18 participate in minor parties' precinct conventions or sign supplemental nominating petitions for statewide candidates; [t]o demonstrate this degree of support does not appear either impossible or impractical, and we are unwilling to assume that the requirement imposes a substantially greater hardship on minority party access to the ballot); see also Burdick, 112 S.Ct. at 2064 (1% of all registered voters for party participation in statewide primary); Illinois State Board of Elections, 440 U.S. at 186 (25,000 signatures for statewide office); Storer, 415 U.S. at 740 (325,000 signatures statewide in 24 days); Jenness, 403 U.S. at 431 (5% of state's registered voters).8 Unlike the statutes under challenge in American Party and other cases, however, the Maine statute requires Party candidates to obtain the signatures of Party members, as opposed to independent voters or voters enrolled in other political parties.9 Accordingly, the Party insists, the onerousness of the signature requirements must be defined, for constitutional purposes, as a percentage of party membership (the eligible pool of 8The Party does not complain about, and we do not consider, the potential onerousness of the signature requirements for district and county offices under the Maine statute as a percentage of the total population of registered voters in those political subdivisions. 9The apparent purpose of Maine's party-member signature requirement is to collapse into a single, administratively simpler requirement two legitimate State interests: ensuring sufficient party support among the electorate and sufficient candidate support within the party. We are persuaded that these State interests are constitutionally defensible individually and, in combination, impose no impermissible burden on associational rights in the present case. 19 possible signers), rather than the entire electorate. See Storer, 415 U.S. at 742-43. Any broader view, says the Party, would treat all registered voters as potential Party enrollees, amount[ing] to forced political association violative of First Amendment rights. See Democratic Party v. Wisconsin, 450 U.S. at 122 (the freedom to associate for the 'common advancement of political beliefs' necessarily presupposes the freedom to identify the people who constitute the association, and to limit the association to those people only) (quoting Kusper v. Pontikes, 414 U.S. 51, 56 (1973)); Consumer Party, 633 F.Supp. at 889-90 (a party may not be essentially required to broaden its message or appeal in an effort to increase its membership; a group's associative rights depend on having as members only those who share a particular vision and collective purpose); see also Roberts v. United States Jaycees, 468 U.S. 609, 623 (1984) (freedom of association . . . plainly presupposes a freedom not to associate).10 Viewed as the Party urges, the Maine scheme indeed would appear onerous; the Party lacks sufficient membership support in many districts and counties to meet the primary-ballot 10The Party presented no evidence that its low membership levels are related to voluntary exercise of its associational right to exclude would-be members. Nevertheless, challenges to the overbreadth of a statutory scheme, as impeding appellants' First Amendment associational rights, are widely recognized as exceptions to the rule that a person to whom a statute may constitutionally be applied will not be heard to challenge that statute on the grounds that it may conceivably be applied unconstitutionally to others. See Broadrick v. Oklahoma, 413 U.S. 601, 610 (1973). 20 access requirements of 335. We see the issue somewhat differently, however. We need not decide whether there may be circumstances in which significant constitutional problems would result from a regulatory scheme which precluded candidate access to a party's ballot by different means than those under challenge in this case. If such limits exist, it suffices to say that they have not been reached under the Maine electoral scheme. First, the burden about which the Party complains is self-imposed, for the most part. Under Maine law, a party which adopts restrictive membership policies is not required to assume qualified status under 301 et seq., or to assume the burdens of the primary nomination requirement imposed by 331. Indeed, a party can choose to disqualify itself at any time up to April 15 of an election year, even after submitting the party designation and consent of its 'coattail' candidate under 302(1), merely by eschewing the municipal caucuses required by 302- (3).11 If a party voluntarily chooses or continues to pursue the 302 procedure for electoral participation as a qualified party, it must be understood to have assumed the 11The April 15 deadline occurs two weeks after the April 1 deadline for primary candidates to file nomination petitions under 335(8). Thus, any new or small party, uncertain of its membership support, may withhold the final certification necessary for party qualification while it attempts to enroll the members necessary to nominate its candidates to the primary election ballot. If, by April 1, the required membership support is lacking in one or more electoral districts, the party may choose simply by withholding the certification of caucus participation under 302(3) to nominate its candidates to the general ballot by the nomination petition procedure prescribed by 351 et seq. 21 burden of maintaining membership rolls sufficient to nominate candidates through the primary election process. Second, and equally important, a party which chooses not to participate in primary elections as a qualified party retains the option to qualify candidates for the statewide election ballot through the 351 nomination petition procedure. The Party has offered no evidence whatever to suggest that this alternate route to the printed ballot is substantially more burdensome for a small party than a primary-qualification procedure.12 In fact, in the 1992 elections, at least three independent candidates for President Lenora Fulani, H. Ross Perot, and Howard Phillips mustered the requisite 4000 signatures and qualified by petition to be listed, along with their chosen political designation, on Maine's general election ballot. As the Supreme Court recognized in Jenness, 403 U.S. at 441-42, a nomination petition procedure for ballot access by new or small political parties is not inherently impermissible, merely because it is different from the procedure permitted for larger parties, provided the procedure imposes no undue burden. There are obvious differences in kind between the needs and potentials of a 12Although a nomination petition requires twice the number of signatures a party candidate would be required to obtain on a primary petition, see 21-A M.R.S.A. 354(5), these signatures may be obtained from any registered voter, even voters enrolled in other parties. Moreover, the number of required signatures is still quite low, compared to the signature requirements upheld as reasonable in other contexts by the Supreme Court. See supra pp. 18-19. And a party which mobilizes its efforts toward garnering signatures on a nomination petition is spared the Procrustean requirement of establishing elaborate primary election machinery. Jenness, 403 U.S. at 438. 22 political party with historically established broad support, on the one hand, and a new or small political organization on the other. [A State is not] guilty of invidious discrimination in recognizing these differences and providing different routes to the printed ballot. Id.; see also Munro, 479 U.S. at 193 ([i]t is now clear that States may condition access to the general election ballot by a minor-party or independent candidate upon a showing of a modicum of support [in a primary election] among the potential voters for the office); American Party, 415 U.S. at 782 (so long as the larger parties must demonstrate major support among the electorate at the last election, whereas the smaller parties need not, the latter, without being invidiously treated, may be required to establish their position in some other manner). Finally, even if a small party chooses to qualify under 302, and to nominate its political candidates under the primary election procedure, Maine law provides a means by which party candidates may gain access to the general election ballot by soliciting support from unenrolled registered voters through write-in ballots cast in the primary election. The write-in ballot option ensures that no qualified primary voter is denied the opportunity freely to vote for the candidate of his or her choice, and that a small party which is unable to meet the minimal membership requirements for listing any candidates on its primary ballot, despite significant support among the general electorate in a particular district, may nonetheless nominate the 23 candidate who receives a plurality of primary voter support. Unity Party v. Wallace, 707 F.2d 59, 62 (2d Cir. 1983) (write-in candidacy is acceptable alternative to ballot listing where ballot access requirement imposes de minimis encumbrance). The one impediment is that the successful primary candidate's writein plurality must be sufficient to satisfy the numerical requirements of 723(1)(A) (which are, in any event, the same as the nomination petition requirements of 351).13 See supra note 12.