Opinion ID: 686429
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Assessing the means employed

Text: 48 Having decided that the ED, AD, and W requirement is not severe, and that it is justified by a legitimate state goal, we now must consider whether the requirement is a reasonable means of achieving that goal. 49 The district court did not focus on whether the ED, AD, and W requirement was a reasonable electoral device, but instead considered whether it was necessary to the state's goal of petition verification. Having found, contrary to our conclusion, that the burden imposed was severe, Judge Cholakis applied strict scrutiny. In so doing, he distinguished the instant case from Burdick, in which the burden was deemed limited and strict scrutiny therefore not warranted. --- U.S. at ---- - ----, 112 S.Ct. at 2063-65. Judge Cholakis instead relied on Anderson v. Celebrezze, which stated that a court should consider the extent to which [the state's] interests make it necessary to burden the plaintiff's rights. 460 U.S. at 789, 103 S.Ct. at 1570. 50 Burdick cites Anderson with approval, and in fact adopts the Anderson test. But Burdick and its progeny make clear that not every law that imposes any burden upon the right to vote must be subject to strict scrutiny. --- U.S. at ---- - ----, 112 S.Ct. at 2062-63; see Hagelin for President Comm. of Kans. v. Graves, 25 F.3d 956, 961 (10th Cir.1994) (not requiring state to make particularized showing of a need for ballot access laws, but only to establish that they represent reasonable response to the state's interest), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 115 S.Ct. 934, 130 L.Ed.2d 880 (1995); Libertarian Party of Me. v. Diamond, 992 F.2d 365, 373 (1st Cir.) (holding ballot access requirements neither inappropriate to their purposes nor unconstitutionally burdensome), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 114 S.Ct. 310, 126 L.Ed.2d 257 (1993). 7 51 The important lesson of Anderson that Burdick reiterates is that the rigorousness of our 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, --- U.S. at ----, 112 S.Ct. at 2063. Because we have concluded that the burden imposed by the requirement is slight, we need only consider whether the requirement is a reasonable means of achieving the state's legitimate goals. 8 52 This question of the constitutionality of the ED, AD, and W requirement was considered in Berger v. Acito, 457 F.Supp. 296 (S.D.N.Y.1978), and the court there found that the requirement was constitutional, saying it is within the legislative province to provide for the publication and use of the registration information in a particular fashion. 9 Id. at 300. What potentially changes the calculus since that 1978 decision is the advent and accessibility of advanced computer technology. 53 Although the facts in this case appeared to be hotly contested on this question, the relevant facts--as culled from the record, oral argument, and the district court opinions--actually do not appear to be in dispute. There was abundant testimony that for relatively small sums of money--by one account, $12,000, by others, less--the State Board of Elections could gain the computer capacity that would make verification of signatures by books organized by election district numbers obsolete. 54 At the same time, however, neither the plaintiffs, their witnesses, nor the district court contends that the state has that capacity at this time. One of the plaintiffs' witnesses who worked for the state Board testified that the storage capacity of the Board's computer equipment was not adequate for the state's entire voter database. Another, who also worked for the Board, said, I need to analyze this system in a form outside of this court to tell you what the storage requirements are for voter registration stored on the State Board of Elections computer.... [T]hat's something we haven't done yet and need to do. The witness acknowledged that the Board currently lacked the capacity to store a list of the state's registered voters in alphabetical form but could get that capacity if it purchased the proper software and hardware. Finally, one of the plaintiff's witnesses who gathered votes and, as well, reviewed the Board's computer capacity, testified that the Board's equipment as it currently exists could store information about the state's nearly nine million registered voters, but other files would have to be removed, and it would create headaches for the computer technicians. 55 In analyzing the constitutionality of the requirement at issue, we are not to determine how the State of New York should verify voter signatures in the best of all worlds--a world in which it had the funds to create a statewide computer system that was capable of checking the registration status of nine million voters. Rather, we must consider whether the means employed are reasonable. Burdick, --- U.S. at ----, 112 S.Ct. at 2067. We cannot conclude that the burden imposed upon voters by the system as it now exists constitutionally requires the State of New York to expend both the money and human and other resources to alleviate that burden. 10 56 In sum, we conclude that the district court erred in holding that the burden imposed by the ED, AD, and W requirement is severe. Because the level of scrutiny to be applied to the restriction follows from that determination, we hold further that the district court erred in applying strict scrutiny. Applying the rational basis test, we conclude that the provision is constitutional.