Page:United States Reports 502 OCT. TERM 1991.pdf/455

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

297

Scalia, J., dissenting

straightforward application of our decision invalidating a previous version of the Illinois election law, Illinois Bd. of Elections v. Socialist Workers Party, 440 U. S. 173 (1979). That characterization is in my view wrong, and leads to the wrong result. No proper basis has been established in these cases for interfering with the State of Illinois’ arrangement of its elections. Socialist Workers Party involved a challenge to Illinois’ then-requirement that, in elections for offices in political subdivisions of the State, new political parties (and independent candidates) had to obtain the signatures of 5% of the number of persons who voted at the previous election for those offices, no matter how high that number might be—even though new parties could qualify for statewide elections by gathering only 25,000 signatures. See id., at 175–176. The Socialist Workers Party objected to having to collect over 60,000 signatures to run a candidate in the Chicago mayoral election. See id., at 177. We held that, although the State had a legitimate interest in ensuring that a party or independent candidate had a “ ‘significant modicum of support,’ ” there was “no reason” justifying a requirement of greater support for Chicago elections than for statewide elections. Id., at 185–186. The Court contends that the current Illinois law, as interpreted by the Illinois Supreme Court, suffers from the same “constitutional flaw”: It “effectively increas[es] the signature requirement applicable to elections for at least some offices in subdivisions with separate districts [because] the failure of a party’s organizers to obtain 25,000 signatures for each district in which they run candidates disqualifies the party’s candidates in all races within the subdivision.” Ante, at 293. Thus, “a prerequisite to establishing a new political party in such multidistrict subdivisions is some multiple of the number of signatures required of new statewide parties.” Ibid. This analysis serves only to demonstrate why Socialist Workers Party is distinguishable. There is no heightened