Opinion ID: 4529763
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Anderson-Burdick Balancing Test

Text: The right to vote is “a fundamental political right, . . . preservative of all rights.” Dunn v. Blumstein, 405 U.S. 330, 336 (1972) (omission in original) (quoting Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533, 562 (1964)); Fish I, 840 F.3d at 752 (“There can be no dispute that the right to vote is a constitutionally protected fundamental right.”); see also Harper v. Va. State Bd. of Elections, 383 U.S. 663, 670 (1966) (“[T]he right to vote is too precious, too fundamental to be so burdened or conditioned.”). “No right is more precious in a free country than that 30 of having a voice in the election of those who make the laws under which, as good citizens, we must live. Other rights, even the most basic, are illusory if the right to vote is undermined.” Wesberry v. Sanders, 376 U.S. 1, 17 (1964). Nevertheless, “[i]t does not follow . . . that the right to vote in any manner and the right to associate for political purposes through the ballot are absolute.” Burdick, 504 U.S. at 433; accord Utah Republican Party v. Cox, 892 F.3d 1066, 1076 (10th Cir. 2018), cert. denied, 139 S. Ct. 1290 (2019). Instead, the Constitution allows states to “prescribe ‘the Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives,’ and the Court therefore has recognized that States retain the power to regulate their own elections.” Burdick, 504 U.S. at 433 (citation omitted) (quoting U.S. C ONST . art. I, § 4, cl. 1). These regulations can help protect the right to vote by ensuring that elections are “fair and honest” and that “some sort of order, rather than chaos, . . . accompan[ies] the democratic processes.” Id. (quoting Storer v. Brown, 415 U.S. 724, 730 (1974)); accord Campbell v. Buckley, 203 F.3d 738, 745 (10th Cir. 2000); see Timmons v. Twin Cities Area New Party, 520 U.S. 351, 358 (1997) (“States may, and inevitably must, enact reasonable regulations of parties, elections, and ballots to reduce election- and campaign-related disorder.”). However, there is “[n]o bright line,” Timmons, 520 U.S. at 359, that separates those regulations that properly impose order—thereby protecting the 31 fundamental right to vote—from those that unduly burden it—thereby undermining it. See Crawford, 553 U.S. at 190 (plurality opinion of Stevens, J.) (explaining that instead of applying a “litmus test” courts must make a “hard judgment”); Anderson, 460 U.S. at 789 (explaining that instead of applying a “litmus-paper test” “a court must resolve such a challenge by an analytical process that parallels its work in ordinary litigation”). Instead, the Supreme Court has instructed that: A court considering a challenge to a state election law must weigh “the character and magnitude of the asserted injury to the rights protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments that the plaintiff seeks to vindicate” against “the precise interests put forward by the State as justifications for the burden imposed by its rule,” taking into consideration “the extent to which those interests make it necessary to burden the plaintiff’s rights.” Burdick, 504 U.S. at 434 (quoting Anderson, 460 U.S. at 789); accord Santillanes, 546 F.3d at 1320 (“[T]he appropriate test when addressing an Equal Protection challenge to a law affecting a person’s right to vote is to ‘weigh the asserted injury to the right to vote against the precise interests put forward by the State as justifications for the burden imposed by its rule.’” (quoting Crawford, 553 U.S. at 190)). This balancing test has become known as the Anderson-Burdick balancing 32 test. See Cox, 892 F.3d at 1077 (“[W]e analyze electoral regulations using the now-familiar Anderson-Burdick balancing test.”). 3 Both parties agree that this Anderson-Burdick balancing test applies here. We thus turn to examine how the Anderson-Burdick test was applied to a related voting restriction in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, supra. 3 The Supreme Court’s cases have equivocated over which provision of the Constitution mandates this balancing test. Compare Anderson, 460 U.S. at 786 n.7 (“[W]e base our conclusions directly on the First and Fourteenth Amendments and do not engage in a separate Equal Protection Clause analysis. We rely, however, on the analysis in a number of our prior election cases resting on the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. These cases, applying the ‘fundamental rights’ strand of equal protection analysis, have identified the First and Fourteenth Amendment rights implicated by restrictions on the eligibility of voters and candidates, and have considered the degree to which the State’s restrictions further legitimate state interests.” (collecting cases)), with Crawford, 553 U.S. at 207 n. (plurality opinion of Scalia, J.) (“A number of our early right-to-vote decisions, purporting to rely upon the Equal Protection Clause, strictly scrutinized nondiscriminatory voting laws requiring the payment of fees.” (collecting cases)). Our court, however, has traced the Anderson-Burdick balancing test to the Equal Protection Clause. See Santillanes, 546 F.3d at 1319S20; see also Edward B. Foley, Due Process, Fair Play, and Excessive Partisanship: A New Principle for Judicial Review of Election Laws, 84 U. C HI . L. R EV . 655, 674 (2017) (explaining that the Supreme Court’s “equal-protection-for-voting jurisprudence has evolved into what is known as the ‘Anderson-Burdick balancing test’”). Yet, as explained above, the AndersonBurdick balancing test does not entail “a traditional equal-protection inquiry.” Democratic Exec. Comm. of Fla. v. Lee, 915 F.3d 1312, 1319 (11th Cir. 2019); see also Green Party of Tenn. v. Hargett, 791 F.3d 684, 692 (6th Cir. 2015) (discussing relationship between Anderson-Burdick and the Equal Protection Clause, and collecting cases). 33