Opinion ID: 774302
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Foster v. Love and the Statutory Meaning of the Term Election

Text: 40 The plaintiffs assert that an election within the meaning of the federal elections statutes means the process of voting by the electorate at large to select an officeholder. Under this view the TEVS conflict with federal law by allowing voting to take place at times other than federal election day. In contrast to this conception of voting as a process, the defendants posit a fundamental distinction between the physical act of casting a ballot and the election of a federal official, which requires ministerial actions of state and local election officials to transform the voters' preference for a candidate into a final act of selection. Accordingly, the defendants submit that, because the TEVS forestall tallying results until the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, they do not conflict with the establishment of a federal election day. 41 While acknowledging the difficulty of defining with precision the term election as used in the federal elections statutes, the Supreme Court recently provided guidance on the question in Foster v. Love, 522 U.S. 67, 72 (1997). There the court reviewed a challenge to Louisiana's open primary system for conducting congressional elections, in which all candidates regardless of party appeared on the same ballot in October of federal election years. Any candidate who received a majority won election without further action on federal election day, but if no candidate received a majority the top two candidates competed in a run-off election held on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. Because the Louisiana statute countenanced final selection of members of Congress with no action at all on federal election day, as in fact happened in over eighty percent of elections held under this open primary system, the Court ruled that it conflicted with federal law. Id. at 72-73, 118 S. Ct. 464. 42 In reaching this conclusion, the Court surveyed the federal elections statutes and their legislative history and supplied the following definition of an election: 43 When the federal statutes speak of the election of a Senator or Representative, they plainly refer to the combined actions of voters and officials meant to make a final selection of an officeholder . . . . See N. Webster, An American Dictionary of the English Language 433 (C. Goodrich & N. Porter eds. 1869) (defining election as the act of choosing a person to fill an office). By establishing a particular day as the day on which these actions must take place, the statutes simply regulate the time of the election, a matter on which the Constitution explicitly gives Congress the final say. 44 Id. at 71-72, 118 S. Ct. 464 (emphasis added). The Court declined to identify these combined acts of voters and officials or to specify which of them must occur on federal election day for a statute to pass muster. Id. at 72, 118 S. Ct. 464 ([O]ur decision does not turn on any nicety in isolating precisely what acts a State must cause to be done on federal election day (and not before it) in order to satisfy the statute.). Accordingly, the Court crafted a narrow holding: a contested selection of candidates for a congressional office that is concluded as a matter of law before the federal election day, with no act in law or in fact to take place on the date chosen by Congress, clearly violates the federal statutes. Id. To underscore the ground left uncovered by its holding, the Court further noted that [w]e hold today only that if an election does take place, it may not be consummated prior to federal election day. Id. at 72 n.4, 118 S. Ct. 464. 4