Court Opinion

ID: 9723348
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 10:12:16.601099+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:47.405824
License: Public Domain

GESELL, District Judge
(dissent-
ing) :
Moreover, the majority’s special concern for “minor” parties in this situation is misplaced. If the challenged disclosure provision offends the First Amendment, both major and minor parties subject to it, including their respective contributors, should be treated the same. “Harassment” is just as obnoxious and sometimes just as likely to succeed if it is directed against a majority party and its contributors. Surely the recent relevations as to experience under the last administration demonstrate that supporters of the opposition were not immune. In short, the disclosure provision must stand or fall in its entirety without benefit of a special judicially created exemption developed solely for the benefit of “minor” parties and their adherents.
Political discussion and argument are the life blood of a representative democracy. As important as these things are, however, it is equally important for citizens to know who is doing the talking and the arguing. There is too much sham in the land. An open and fair election is the culmination of a process that exemplifies our commitment to preserve essential First Amendment values. Disclosure is an effective prophylatic for removing improper influences on free debate, particularly in municipal elections where many so-called “minor” parties may participate and influence results.1 Full disclosure thus enhances the First Amendment, and Congress act*764ed to strengthen these constitutional values in our election process by providing this simple method for monitoring the selection and support of candidates for public office.
The election process has traditionally been subject to numerous governmental regulations. The power of Congress to regulate campaign practices in the Nation’s Capital by eliminating secrecy in election campaigns to restore confidence in our democratic process is not subject to dispute. In fact, the legislature had a substantial if not compelling interest. Cf. Storer v. Brown, 415 U.S. 724, 736, 94 S.Ct. 1274, 39 L.Ed.2d 714 (1974). The ultimate issue presented is only whether the statute as drafted is overly broad in its attempt to accomplish a legitimate end. Congress acted upon a wealth of persuasive data demonstrating the need for disclosure, emphasized so obviously by recent developments in the political arena. The provisions of the • Act serve a well-defined and proper legislative purpose, and any harassment that may theoretically occur would be only collateral to essential disclosure which the legislative purpose Nationally requires.
In the present situation it cannot be said that a claim of unconstitutionality is sustainable. See United States v. O’Brien, 391 U.S. 367, 88 S.Ct. 1673, 20 L.Ed.2d 672 (1968); Stoner v. Fortson, 379 F.Supp. 704 (N.D.Ga.1974) (three-judge court). The requirements of the statute are very precise, not vague. Moreover, there is nothing in the legislative history or in the rules and regulations governing the administration of the Act which suggests in the slightest way that the legislation was designed obliquely or otherwise to flush out unnecessarily the names of contributors to unpopular or controversial parties such as the Socialist Workers Party. Compare N. A. A. C. P. v. Button, 371 U.S. 415, 445-46, 83 S.Ct. 328, 9 L.Ed.2d 405 (1963) (Douglas, Jr., concurring). The Socialist Workers Party, which follows the teachings olf Trotsky in interpreting Marx, Lenin afiid Engels, can express its views on aspects of the campaign free of disclosure so long as it does not undertake to further the interests of anyone it has nominated. The Act goes even further. It contains an exemption which would permit party candidates to run without making the disclosures complained of so long as each candidate’s total campaign spending does not exceed $250,. Pub.L. 93-376, § 209, and the disclosure of contributors’ names is not required where an individual contributes less than $50, § 207(b)(2).
If governmental or private interests in fact improperly retaliate against a voter or his party because of beliefs or attitudes expressed and such retaliation is demonstrably caused by disclosure resulting from the operation of the Act, surely Congress and the Federal Judiciary can and should intervene.
However, at this stage the Court should deal with fact, not conjecture, and should hesitate to invalidate this important effort to improve the electoral process even before the Act is tested through actual experience and plaintiffs are required to comply.2 In practice, it may be impossible to make the showing required by the majority since, as Chief Judge Bazelon has effectively discussed in his separate opinion in Buckley v. Valeo, there are substantial difficulties in providing the proof necessary to claim an exemption. More importantly, the Court may be doing great damage to the privacy of individuals who support unpopular causes, for it is unnecessarily creating an annual' exemption process which by its very nature may well be far more offensive under the First
*765Amendment than the theoretical effects of the statute itself.
Assuming the controversy presented is ripe, I would uphold the statute, and therefore I must respectfully dissent.
ORDER
This three-judge constitutional court, convened pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2284, has before it defendant’s motion to dissolve the three-judge court or, in the alternative, to dismiss the complaint on the merits. Upon consideration thereof, including oral argument for the respective parties, and .in accordance with the opinion of the Court of even date herewith, it is, by the Court, this 22 day of October, 1975,
Ordered, that the complaint be, and the same hereby is, dismissed without prejudice, in order that the plaintiffs may exhaust their administrative remedies before the District of Columbia Board of Elections and Ethics, established under Pub.L. 93-376, 88 Stat. 446.

. Allan Budka, the Socialist Workers Party candidate for the post of Chairman of the City Council in the 1974 D.C. elections received 2,587 votes out of a total of 91,412, 21 D.G.Register 1072 (Nov. 29, 1974), or 2.83 percent of the total vote.
Historically, 2.83 percent of the vote is sufficient to change the result in a great many elections. Of the 34 United States Senators elected in 1974, nine would have been defeated if less than 2.83 percent of the vote had been shifted to their opponents. Ten of the 35 state governors elected in 1974 would have lost if 2.83 percent of their vote had been shifted to their opponents. Fifty-one Congressmen were in that situation. See 22 Cong.Quarterly Weekly Report 3084-3091 (Nov. 9, 1974). Past elections have been similarly close. Forty-six of 204 Senate elections held in the years 1964-74 were sufficiently close that a 2.83 percent shift in the vote would have changed the outcome. See 2 Cong.Quarterly, Congress and the Nation, 1964-68, at 34-5 (1969); 3 id., 1968-1972 at 38^0 (1973); Cong.Quarterly Weekly Report, supra.

. It should be noted that plaintiffs have never made the disclosures required by the Act and yet they recite a long experience with harassment arising from their views. Perforce they must contend the Act makes the air more chilling, but no court has provided the legal thermometer for measuring the constitutional significance of a statute that may hypothetically lower the temperature on an already cold night.