Court Opinion

ID: 9425211
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:14:04.187658+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:54.042962
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Marshall,
with whom Mr. Justice Douglas and Mr. Justice Brennan concur,
dissenting.
In Dunn v. Blumstein, 405 U. S. 330, 348 (1972), just last Term, we held that a 30-day residency requirement provided the State with “an ample period of time . . . to complete whatever administrative tasks are necessary to prevent fraud” in the process of voter registration. We made that judgment in light of the facts that Congress had made a similar judgment as to presidential and vice-presidential elections, 42 U. S. C. § 1973aa-l (a) (6), that roughly half the States had periods of similar length, 1972-1973 Book of the States 36-37 (as of time of decision), and that the evidence needed to determine residency was relatively easy to find. The District Court, after hearing evidence about the administrative burdens in Arizona, found that appellants needed no longer than 30 days to complete the same tasks. I find nothing in the record that leads me to conclude that this judgment was erroneous.
The Court relies on two factors to justify the longer period. First, Arizona’s volunteer registrar system is said to result in so many errors that their correction requires 45 days. But these errors occur only because the deputy registrars are inadequately trained and the central supervision of the data-control process is not well organized. The District Court found that “under present conditions, at least forty-five days are required to make a voter list as free from error as possible” (emphasis added). This justified its refusal to enjoin the operation of the statute as to the election held in November 1972. But appellant Marston’s testimony was directed almost exclusively to what can only be considered readily *683solvable problems caused by untrained personnel in a relatively small office. Appellants presented no evidence that improvements in the administration of the deputy registrar system, including earlier recruitment and better training of deputy registrars and of data-processing personnel in the central offices, could not be adopted before the next election. If, as we held in Dunn, the State “cannot choose means which unnecessarily burden or restrict constitutionally protected activity,” and if the State must carry “a heavy burden of justification,” 405 U. S., at 343, surely it must show that it cannot, by better administration, eliminate the errors that justified a 50-day period in 1972. The District Court, in my view, correctly concluded that “the State has presented no facts demonstrating a compelling interest” in its 50-day requirement.
The second “complicating factor” is said to be the burden on county recorders caused by the need to interrupt the processing of affidavits filed by new registrants in order for them to work on the fall primaries. Here too the appellants showed no need to use small staffs. It is by no means obvious that the recorders’ staffs could not be increased temporarily to deal with this “complication.” Certainly that is a method of processing affidavits which less seriously burdens the right to vote. “And if there are other, reasonable ways to achieve those goals with a lesser burden on constitutionally protected activity, a State may not choose the way of greater interference.” Dunn v. Blumstein, supra, at 343.
In addition, appellants have established a system to register voters for presidential and vice-presidential elections, in compliance with the requirement of 42 U. S. C. § 1973aa-l (d), that no State may impose a residency requirement of greater than 30 days for such elections. In Arizona, those voters who qualify for presidential and vice-presidential elections, but not for state elections, *684are given absentee ballots. This eliminates the necessity to prepare a separate list of registration lists. Any administrative problems caused by the inability to correct misspellings, to alphabetize the lists, and to determine in which precinct the voter lived — the only difficulties which appellants mentioned in their testimony* — could be eliminated by similar treatment of late registrants for all elections. And if these voters did not have to appear at the polls, the fears of deterring other voters by delays at the polling places would disappear.
Even if the evidence below established that the administrative burdens of a 30-day limitation on general registration could not possibly be removed, that would not itself justify the same limitation on registration of newly arrived voters. General registration requirements affect every voter in the State. Durational residency requirements affect a much smaller class of potential voters, and the burdens of registering the members of that class will therefore be significantly smaller. Further, general registration requirements, with which any otherwise eligible voter may comply if he acts with sufficient diligence, might be thought to impair less substan*685tially the right to vote than do durational residency requirements, which bar a newly arrived voter from any participation in the elections. Serious administrative problems might justify the less severe impairment, but a total bar to participation can be justified only by administrative problems of the highest order.
In short, the evidence produced below abundantly supports the District Court’s conclusion that appellants had failed to carry the heavy burden of justifying the 50-day limitation period in light of reasonably available and less restrictive alternatives. If this Court has drawn a line beyond which reliance on administrative inconvenience is extremely questionable, as we did in Dunn, we can avoid an unprincipled numbers game only if we insist that any deviations from the line we have drawn, after mature consideration, be justified by far more substantial evidence than that produced in the District Court by appellants. I would therefore affirm the judgment of the District Court.

Appellant Marston testified that there would be difficulty in locating the proper precincts and school districts for each registrant. Again, this pertains exclusively to the election in 1972, because of several nonrecurring facts: the State had recently “cleansed” its voting lists, dropping everyone from the rolls and requiring reregistration of every voter; the State had just been redistricted; and a statute rescheduling school board elections caused transitional problems. Difficulties in determining the proper precinct for each voter could be eliminated by a simple reprograming of the computer used by the registrars. Now the computer simply indicates an error if the address and the precinct entered on the registration form by the registrars are inconsistent; it would not be difficult for a programer to have the computer itself find the proper precinct. And, as appellant Marston testified, his task would not be difficult at all if he used an “on-line” system of processing the cards through the computer rather than the present “batch” system.