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

Heading: Regulating Primary Participation

Text: States possess a comparable interest in ensuring that a party's nominating process includes sufficient participation by the party's own members or supporters. Absent some level of participation by party members, the integrity of party nominations might be compromised by party raiding, whereby voters in sympathy with one party . . . influence or determine the results of another party's primary, Rosario, 410 U.S. at 761-62, which in turn could threaten the integrity of general elections and dilute the informative function of a party's label as a description of its collective political purpose. See Tashjian, 479 U.S. at 220-21 (noting informative function of party labels as shorthand designation of the views of [the] party['s] candidates on matters of public concern); Rosario, 410 U.S. at 762 (noting 7Seven of the appellant candidates sought election in state senate districts; eight in state representative districts; and the remaining two as representative in each of Maine's two congressional districts. 16 State's asserted interest in preventing primary votes which are not in sympathy with the party's principles). Appellants correctly suggest that the Supreme Court, in Tashjian, minimized the significance of the State's interest in attempting to act as the ideological guarantor of [a particular] Party's candidates, 479 U.S. at 218, and reaffirmed its faith in the ability of individual voters to inform themselves about campaign issues, id. (quoting Anderson, 460 U.S. at 796). In arriving at this conclusion, however, the Court specifically noted the state-law requirement that parties maintain a certain level of support among the general electorate, see id. at 211 n.2, and that party candidates thereafter garner substantial minority support at the Party's closed convention: The Party is not proposing that independents be allowed to choose the Party's nominee without Party participation; on the contrary, to be listed on the Party's primary ballot continues to require, under a statute not challenged here, that the primary candidate have obtained at least 20% of the vote at a Party convention, which only Party members may attend. Id. at 220-21 (emphasis added). In light of the Tashjian Court's explicit reference to a closed nomination process, by a Party possessing substantial support among the general electorate, we do not think Tashjian signals a retreat from the position that the State may impose reasonable safeguards to ensure active participation by a significant number of a party's members or supporters in the course of the nominating process.