Page:United States Reports 502 OCT. TERM 1991.pdf/446

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NORMAN v. REED Opinion of the Court

not. Even if the issue before us were limited to petitioners’ eligibility to use the Party name on the 1990 ballot, that issue would be worthy of resolution as “ ‘capable of repetition, yet evading review.’ ” Moore v. Ogilvie, 394 U. S. 814, 816 (1969). There would be every reason to expect the same parties to generate a similar, future controversy subject to identical time constraints if we should fail to resolve the constitutional issues that arose in 1990. The matter before us carries a potential of even greater significance, however. As we have noted, the 1990 electoral results would entitle the HWP to enter the next election as an established party in all or part of Cook County, freed from the petition requirements of § 10–2, so long as its candidates were entitled to the places on the ballot that our stay order effectively gave them. This underscores the vitality of the questions posed, even though the election that gave them life is now behind us. III For more than two decades, this Court has recognized the constitutional right of citizens to create and develop new political parties. The right derives from the First and Fourteenth Amendments 8 and advances the constitutional interest of like-minded voters to gather in pursuit of common political ends, thus enlarging the opportunities of all voters to express their own political preferences. See Anderson v. Celebrezze, 460 U. S. 780, 793–794 (1983); Illinois Bd. of Elections v. Socialist Workers Party, 440 U. S. 173, 184 (1979); Williams v. Rhodes, 393 U. S. 23, 30–31 (1968). To the degree that a State would thwart this interest by limiting the access of new parties to the ballot, we have called for the demonstration of a corresponding interest sufficiently 8 As in Anderson v. Celebrezze, 460 U. S. 780 (1983), “we base our conclusions directly on the First and Fourteenth Amendments and do not engage in a separate Equal Protection Clause analysis. We rely, however, on the analysis in a number of our prior election cases resting on the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.” Id., at 786–787, n. 7.