Page:United States Reports 502 OCT. TERM 1991.pdf/450

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NORMAN v. REED Opinion of the Court

court apparently held that disqualification of a party’s entire slate of candidates is the appropriate penalty for failing to meet this requirement, and it accordingly treated petitioners’ failure to collect enough signatures for their suburbandistrict candidates as an adequate ground for disqualifying every candidate running under the HWP name in Cook County. This is not our first time to consider the constitutionality of an Illinois law governing the number of nominating signatures the organizers of a new party must gather to field candidates in local elections. In Illinois Bd. of Elections v. Socialist Workers Party, 440 U. S. 173 (1979), we examined Illinois’s earlier ballot-access scheme, under which party organizers seeking to field candidates in statewide elections were (as they still are) effectively required to gather 25,000 signatures. See § 10–2. At that time, the statute separately required those organizing new parties in political subdivisions to collect signatures totaling at least 5% of the number of people voting at the previous election for offices of that subdivision. In the city of Chicago, the subdivision at issue in Socialist Workers Party, the effect of that provision was to require many more than 25,000 signatures. Although this Court recognized the State’s interest in restricting the ballot to parties with demonstrated public support, the Court took the requirement for statewide contests as an indication that the more onerous standard for local contests was not the least restrictive means of advancing that interest. Id., at 186. The Illinois Legislature responded to this ruling by amending its statute to cap the 5% requirement for “any district or political subdivision” at 25,000 signatures. Thus, if organizers of a new party wish to field candidates in a large county without separate districts, and if 5% of the number of voters at the previous county election exceeds 25,000, the party now needs to gather only 25,000 signatures.