Court Opinion

ID: 9425460
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:14:46.414191+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:55.680538
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Blackmun,
dissenting.
The deprivation Mrs. Pontikes claims to have suffered, and which the Court today enshrouds with the mantle of unconstitutionality, is that she has been restrained by the Illinois statute from voting in one primary election of one party in the relatively minor context of a personal desire to undo an established party affiliation. Apart from this meager restraint, appellee Pontikes is *62fully free to associate with the party of her varying choice. She is, and has been, completely free to vote as she chooses in any general election. And she was free to vote in the primary of the party with which she had affiliated and voted in the preceding primary.
It is important, I think — and deserving of repeated emphasis — to note that this very limited statutory restriction on the appellee’s exercise of her franchise is triggered solely by her personal and voluntary decision. This being so, the Court’s conclusion seems to me to dilute an important First Amendment concept the vitality of which, in the long run, necessarily will suffer from strained and artificial applications of this kind. The mere fact that a state statute lightly brushes upon the right to vote and the right of association, important as these are, should not automatically result in invalidation. Prior case law does not require a conclusion of invalidity' where, as here, the intrusion is so minor. See McDonald v. Board of Election Comm’rs, 394 U. S. 802 (1969); Rosario v. Rockefeller, 410 U. S. 752 (1973).
In nearly all the voting cases relied upon by the Court and by the appellee, the Court was faced with situations where the disqualification amounted to a direct disenfranchisement or a vote dilution suffered by a discrete class whose impediment, as so imposed, was the result of an involuntary condition not directly tied to the franchise. See, for example, Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections, 383 U. S. 663 (1966) (poll tax and wealth); Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U. S. 533 (1964) (location); Cipriano v. City of Houma, 395 U. S. 701 (1969) (property ownership); Carrington v. Rash, 380 U. S. 89 (1965) (military status). Cf. Dunn v. Blumstein, 405 U. S. 330 (1972) (residence). In each of these cases there was a direct impairment of the ability of the affected class, without voluntary action, to participate in the electoral process. The level of intrusion was markedly significant.
*63What is before us here is a fairly complex statutory structure designed by Illinois to protect the integrity of the ballot box and the party system. The interest asserted by the State is clearly a legitimate one. Rosario v. Rockefeller, 410 U. S., at 761; Dunn v. Blumstein, 405 U. S., at 345; Bullock v. Carter, 405 U. S. 134, 145 (1972). And, it seems to me, means of the kind Illinois has employed are reasonably related to the fulfillment of that interest. The extent to which organized party raiding can disrupt, with unfortunate results, the orderly process of party primary balloting is, perhaps, open to reasonable differences of opinion. Indeed, in this case the parties have joined issue as to the precise degree of impact this practice has had in recent Illinois elections. Regardless of which factual version is to be credited, the legitimacy of the interest is unquestioned. With respect to a State like Illinois, where party regimentation on an extensive scale is legendary, the Court, in my view, should move cautiously when it is tempted to pass judgment in terms of assuming that there is a better or a less drastic means by which the State is able to achieve its admittedly laudable and lawful purpose.
By resorting to a standard of rigid and strict review, and by indulging in what I fear is a departure from the appropriately deferential approach in Rosario, the Court places itself in the position of failing to give the States the elbow room they deserve and must possess if they are to formulate solutions for the many and particular problems confronting them that are associated with the preservation of the integrity of the franchise. Cf. Phoenix v. Kolodziejski, 399 U. S. 204 (1970); Burns v. Fortson, 410 U. S. 686, 687 (1973) (concurring opinion). Surely, at some point, the important interest of the State in protecting its entire electoral system outweighs a minor *64and incidental burden that happens to fall on a few uniquely situated citizens.
The Illinois Legislature has determined that a rule precluding voting in the primaries of different parties in successive annual elections is a desirable and necessary means by which to preserve an otherwise vulnerable structure. In Rosario, 410 U. S., at 762, we applied a “particularized legitimate purpose” standard to a similarly directed scheme and upheld the New York statute. As Mr. Justice Rehnquist points out in his dissent, post, at 68, the degree of disenfranchisement resulting from the New York provision is potentially as great as, if not greater than, the Illinois provision challenged here. That case and this one, taken together, therefore, effect incongruous results. Not only is the actual disenfranchisement in this case no greater than that in Rosario, but the Illinois provision has a more rational relation to its purpose than does the New York provision. The New York statute specified an arbitrary time period prior to which it is assumed that organized party switching for raiding purposes will not occur. In contrast, Illinois chose not to employ a flat time limit that is by nature speculative and arbitrary; instead, it tied its disqualification directly to a significant event, namely, a vote in another party's last primary. Seemingly, the 23-month period was chosen so that the limitation would not extend back beyond the most recent primary. When primaries are held annually, the 23-month period amounts to no more than a one-year limitation, and in this respect the statute is drawn as narrowly as can be expected for a system that is tied to a prior primary vote rather than a designated time period. By tying the cutoff to a primary, the Illinois scheme seems directly designed to succeed in preventing organized crossovers, for it is highly unlikely that any significant number of party regulars would ever be instructed not to vote at all in *65one primary in order to subvert the next one that will not be held for another year.
Mr. Justice Rehnquist also observes that the Illinois system does have the side effect of creating a per se exclusion for a few voters. It is this factor, apparently, that has caused the Court to seek to distinguish Rosario. In New York the disqualification occasioned by the time limit will have its impact, more often than not, upon those who have not been diligent. This, indeed, was the very situation in Rosario. The Illinois provision, on the other hand, affects only party switchers. And they clearly are the group most amenable to organized raiding. I do not agree that any marginal difference that may exist between the New York rule and the Illinois rule must have the effect of transforming a “legitimate time limitation,” Rosario, 410 U. S., at 762, into an unconstitutional denial of freedom of association. This incongruity underscores what I believe to be the potential mischief that results from an easy and all-too-ready resort to a strict-scrutiny standard in election cases of this kind. To be sure, the line between constitutionality and unconstitutionality must be drawn somewhere. But I would not draw it short of what Illinois has done here.