Page:United States Reports 502 OCT. TERM 1991.pdf/443

 502us2$22M 08-19-96 17:40:23 PAGES OPINPGT

Cite as: 502 U. S. 279 (1992)

285

Opinion of the Court

of Reed’s claims. First, it dismissed her contention that, because there was already an established political party named the “Harold Washington Party” in the city of Chicago, petitioners could not run under that name for the various county offices. Reed relied on the provision of Illinois law that a “new political party,” which petitioners sought to form, “shall not bear the same name as, nor include the name of any established political party. . . .” Ill. Rev. Stat., ch. 46, § 10–5 (1989). The Board, however, suggested that a literal reading of § 10–5 would effectively forbid a political party established in one political subdivision to expand into others, and held that the provision’s true purpose was “to prevent persons who are not affiliated with a party from ‘latching on’ to the popular party name, thereby promoting voter confusion and denigrating party cohesiveness.” The Board found no such dangers here, as Timothy Evans, the only HWP candidate to run in Chicago’s most recent municipal election, had authorized petitioners to use the Party name. The Board also rejected Reed’s claim that petitioners had failed to gather enough nominating signatures to run as a party for any Cook County office. While the Board found that their failure to gather 25,000 signatures from the suburbs disqualified those who wished to run for the suburbandistrict commissioner seats, it held that this failure was no reason under § 10–2 to disqualify the candidates running under the Party name for city-district and countywide offices. The Board observed that construing the statute to disqualify the entire Cook County slate on this basis would advance no valid state interest and would raise serious constitutional concerns. Finally, the Board rejected Reed’s claim that, under § 10–2, petitioners’ failure to designate Party candidates for any of the judicial seats designated for either the city district, the suburban district, or the county at large disqualified the entire slate of candidates running under the Party name for all