Williams v. Rhodes/Concurrence Harlan

by John Marshall Harlan II

United States Supreme Court

393 U.S. 23

Williams  v.  Rhodes

 Argued: Oct. 7, 1968. --- Decided: Oct 15, 1968

Mr. Justice HARLAN, concurring in the result.

I agree that the American Independent Party is entitled to have the names of its Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates placed on the Ohio ballot in the forthcoming election, but that, for the practical reasons stated by the Court, the Socialist Labor Party is not. However, I would rest this decision entirely on the proposition that Ohio's statutory scheme violates the basic right of political association assured by the First Amendment which is protected against state infringement under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. See NAACP v. Button, 371 U.S. 415, 83 S.Ct. 328, 9 L.Ed.2d 405 (1964); Bates v. City of Little Rock, 361 U.S. 516, 80 S.Ct. 412, 4 L.Ed.2d 480 (1960); NAACP v. State of Alabama ex rel. Patterson, 357 U.S. 449, 78 S.Ct. 1163, 2 L.Ed.2d 1488 (1958). It is true that Ohio has not directly limited appellants' right to assemble or discuss public issues or solicit new members. Compare Thomas v. Collins, 323 U.S. 516, 65 S.Ct. 315, 89 L.Ed. 430 (1945); De Jonge v. State of Oregon, 299 U.S. 353, 57 S.Ct. 255, 81 L.Ed. 278 (1937); Near v. State of Minnesota ex rel. Olson, 283 U.S. 697, 51 S.Ct. 625, 75 L.Ed. 1357 (1931). Instead, by denying the appellants any opportunity to participate in the procedure by which the President is selected, the State has eliminated the basic incentive that all political parties have for conducting such activities, thereby depriving appellants of much of the substance, if not the form, of their protected rights. The right to have one's voice heard and one's views considered by the appropriate governmental authority is at the core of the right of political association.

It follows that the particular method by which Presidential Electors are chosen is not of decisive importance to a solution of the constitutional problem before us. Just as a political group has a right to organize effectively so that its position may be heard in court, NAACP v. Button, supra, or in the legislature, cf. Eastern R.R. Presidents Conference v. Noerr Motor Freight, Inc., 365 U.S. 127, 137-138, 81 S.Ct. 523, 529-530, 5 L.Ed.2d 464 (1961); United States v. Rumely, 345 U.S. 41, 46-47, 73 S.Ct. 543, 546-547, 97 L.Ed. 770 (1953); United States v. Harriss, 347 U.S. 612, 625-626, 74 S.Ct. 808, 811, 816-817, 98 L.Ed. 989 (1954); so it has the right to place its candidate for the Presidency before whatever body has the power to make the State's selection of Electors. Consequently, it makes no difference that the State of Ohio may, under the Second Article of the Constitution, place the power of Electoral selection beyond the control of the general electorate. The requirement imposed by the Due Process Clause remains the same-no matter what the institution to which the decision is entrusted, political groups have a right to be heard before it. A statute that would require that all Electors be members of the two major parties is subject to the same constitutional challenge regardless of whether it is the legislature, the people, or some other body that is empowered to make the ultimate decision under the laws of the State.

Of course, the State may limit the right of political association by invoking an impelling policy justification for doing so. But as my Brother BLACK'S opinion demonstrates, Ohio has been able to advance no such justification for denying almost half a million of its citizens their fundamental right to organize effectively for political purposes. Consequently, it may not exclude them from the process by which Presidential Electors are selected.

In deciding this case of first impression, I think it unnecessary to draw upon the Equal Protection Clause. ^[1] I am by no means clear that equal protection doctrine, especially as it has been propounded in the recent state reapportionment cases, e.g., Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533, 84 S.Ct. 1362, 12 L.Ed.2d 506 (1964), may properly be applied to adjudicate disputes involving the mere procedure by which the President is selected, as that process is governed by profoundly different principles. ^[2] Despite my doubts on this score, I think it perfectly consistent and appropriate to hold the Due Process Clause applicable. For I believe that our task is more difficult than one which involves merely the mechanical application of the commands to be found in the Fourteenth Amendment or in the first section of the Second Article to the Constitution. Rather, we must attempt to accommodate as best we may the narrow provision drafted by the Philadelphia Convention with the broad principles announced in the Fourteenth Amendment, generations later.

A decision resting solely upon the Due Process Clause would permit such an accommodation-for such a holding fully respects the original purposes and early development of the Electoral College. When one looks beyond the language of Article II, and considers the Convention's understanding of the College, Ohio's restrictive approach is seen to undermine what the draftsmen understood to be its very essence. The College was created to permit the most knowledgeable members of the community to choose the executive of a nation whose continental dimensions were thought to preclude an informed choice by the citizenry at large. ^[3] If a State declares that an entire class of citizens is ineligible for the position of Elector, and that class is defined in a way in which individual merit plays no part, it strikes at the very basis of the College as it was originally conceived.

The constitutional grant of power to the States was intended for a different purpose. While Madison reports that the popular election of Electors on a district-by-district basis was the method 'mostly, if not exclusively, in view when the Constitution was framed and adopted,' 3 M. Farrand, The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, p. 459 (1911), it is quite clear that a significant, if not dominant, group ^[4] at the Convention contemplated that Electors would be chosen by other methods. It was to accommodate these members that the state legislatures were given their present leeway. ^[5] While during the first four decades of the Republic, the States did in fact adopt a variety of methods for selecting their Electors, ^[6] the parties in this case have pointed to, and I have found, no case in which the legislature attempted by statute to restrict the class of the enfranchised citizenry that could be considered for the office by whatever body was to make the choice. ^[7]

Nothing in the history of the Electoral College from the moment of its inception, then, indicates that the original understanding of that institution would at all be compromised if we refuse to read the language of Art. II, § 1, as granting a power of arbitrary action which is so radically inconsistent with the general principles of the Due Process Clause. Consequently, there is no obstacle to a holding which denies the States, absent an overriding state interest, the right to prevent third parties from having an opportunity to put their candidates before the attention of the voters or whatever other body the State has designated as the one which is to choose Electors.

A word should be added about the constitutional status of Ohio's requirement that a third party, to qualify for ballot position, must collect the signatures of eligible voters in a number equal to 15% of those voting at the last gubernatorial election. As I do not understand the State to contest the fact that Mr. Wallace and his partisans have successfully gathered more than the 433,100 signatures required by law, we can only properly reach this issue in the Socialist Labor Party case-for this Party did not even attempt to comply with the statutory command. While the Court's opinion, striking down Ohio's statutory scheme in its entirety, does, as I read it, afford the Socialist Labor Party declaratory relief from the 15% provision, I think it well to deal with it more explicitly than the Court has done.

In my view, this requirement, even when regarded in isolation, must fall. As my Brother BLACK'S opinion suggests, the only legitimate interest the State may invoke in defense of this barrier to third-party candidacies is the fear that, without such a barrier, candidacies will proliferate in such numbers as to create a substantial risk of voter confusion. ^[8] Ohio's requirement cannot be said to be reasonably related to this interest. Even in the unprecedented event of a complete and utter popular disaffection with the two established parties, Ohio law would permit as many as six additional party candidates to compete with the Democrats and Republicans only if popular support should be divided relatively evenly among the new groups. And with fundamental freedoms at stake, such an unlikely hypothesis cannot support an incursion upon protected rights, especially since the presence of eight candidacies cannot be said, in light of experience, to carry a significant danger of voter confusion. As both Ohio's electoral history ^[9] and the actions taken by the overwhelming majority of other States ^[10] suggest, opening the ballot to this extent is perfectly consistent with the effective functioning of the electoral process. In sum, I think that Ohio has fallen far short of showing the compelling state interest necessary to overcome this otherwise protected right of political association.

Since Ohio's requirement is so clearly disproportionate to the magnitude of the risk that it may properly act to prevent, I need not reach the question of the size of the signature barrier a State may legitimately raise against third parties on this ground. This should be left to the Ohio Legislature in the first instance.

Mr. Justice STEWART, dissenting in No. 543.

Notes

1. The fact that appellants have chosen to pitch their argument throughout on the Equal Protection Clause does not, of course, limit us in reaching our decision here.
2. At no stage in the complex process by which a President is chosen is the 'one man, one vote' principle of Reynolds v. Sims followed. The constitutional decision to grant each State at least three Electors, regardless of population, was a necessary part of the effort to gain the consent of the small States, as was the provision that when the choice of the President fell to the House, each state delegation would cast but one vote. See N. Peirce, The People's President 43-50 (1968); L. Wilmerding, The Electoral College 17-22 (1958).
3. Federalist Papers, No. 68 (Alexander Hamilton) (H. Lodge ed. 1908); American Bar Association, Electing The President 15 (1967); Wilmerding, supra, n. 2, at 10; R. MacBride, The American Electoral College 16-17 (1953).
4. The large number of leaders, of varying ideological convictions, who favored popular election included Hamilton, Madison, James Wilson, John Dickinson, Rufus King, Daniel Carroll, and Abraham Baldwin. The opponents of popular selection included Gerry, Ellsworth, Luther Martin, and Roger Sherman. See Chief Justice Fuller's illuminating opinion in McPherson v. Blacker, 146 U.S. 1, 28, 13 S.Ct. 3, 8, 36 L.Ed. 869 (1892). See also Wilmerding, supra, n. 2, at 13-14.
5. The story of the compromise is to be found in Wilmerding, supra, n. 2, at 17-22. The Convention did not, however, direct its attention to the precise meaning of the clause that is the subject of consideration here. See Peirce, supra, n. 2, at 45.
6. Electors were chosen by the legislature itself, by the general electorate on an at-large and district-by-district basis, partly by the legislature and partly by the people, by the legislature from a list of candidates selected by the people, and in other ways. See McPherson v. Blacker, supra, 146 U.S. 28-33, 13 S.Ct. 8-10; Wilmerding, supra, n. 2, c. 3; Peirce, supra, n. 2, at 309.
7. Nor does the leading case in this area, McPherson v. Blacker, supra, support such a claim. There the plaintiffs-in-error had challenged Michigan's attempt to permit its voters to select Electors on a district-by-district, rather than an atlarge, basis. The Court held that, given the early history, see n. 6, supra, the States have the plenary power to alter the method by which Electors are selected so long as the method cannot be attacked on Fourteenth Amendment grounds. Pursuing this analysis, the unanimous Court found the district-by-district approach free of any Fourteenth Amendment defect, 146 U.S., at 37-40, 13 S.Ct., at 11-13. I can perceive no reason to doubt the continuing validity of this holding.
8. My Brother STEWART is, of course, quite right in pointing out that the presence of third parties may on occasion result in the election of the major candidate who is in reality less preferred by the majority of the voters. It seems clear to me, however, that many constitutional electoral structures could be designed which would accommodate this valid state interest, without depriving other political organizations of the right to participate effectively in the political process. A runoff election may be mandated if no party gains a majority, or the decision could be left to the State Legislature in such a case, compare Fortson v. Morris, 385 U.S. 231, 87 S.Ct. 446, 17 L.Ed.2d 330 (1966). Alternatively, the voter could be given the right, at the general election, to indicate both his first and his second choice for the Presidency-if no candidate received a majority of first-choice votes, the second-choice votes could then be considered. Finally, Electors could be chosen on a district-by-district rather than an at-large basis, thereby apportioning the electoral vote in a way more nearly approximating the popular vote. See McPherson v. Blacker, supra, and text, at n. 4, supra. I would conclude that, with the substantial variety of less restrictive alternatives that are available, compare NAACP v. Alabama ex rel. Flowers, 377 U.S. 288, 307-308, 84 S.Ct. 1302, 1313-1314, 12 L.Ed.2d 325 (1964); Saia v. People of State of New York, 334 U.S. 558, 562, 68 S.Ct. 1148, 1150, 92 L.Ed. 1574 (1948); Martin v. City of Struthers, 319 U.S. 141, 146-149, 63 S.Ct. 862, 864-866, 87 L.Ed. 1313 (1943); Thornhill v. State of Alabama, 310 U.S. 88, 96, 60 S.Ct. 736, 741, 84 L.Ed. 1093 (1940); Schneider v. State of New Jersey, 308 U.S. 147, 60 S.Ct. 146, 84 L.Ed. 155 (1939), this interest cannot support Ohio's 15% requirement.
9. Ohio's present statutory scheme is a product of legislative action taken between 1948 and 1952. Before that time, independent candidates had been granted a place on the ballot if they could gather the signatures of registered voters in the number of 1% of those voting at the preceding gubernatorial election and present their petitions 60 days before the general election. The State's experience under this unexacting regime is instructive. Voting statistics compiled by Ohio's Secretary of State reveal that since 1900 no more than seven parties have appeared on the ballot to compete for a major statewide or national office. And even this number was not attained after 1908. During the last 10 years of the old regime, there are only two third-party candidates of record. The State took effective action only after Electors pledged to Henry A. Wallace gained some 30,000 votes out of the 3,000,000 cast in 1948. Since Harry S. Truman carried the State by some 7,000 votes, the Wallace vote might well have been decisive if it had increased marginally.
10. The other 49 States may be grouped in the following categories with regard to the size of the barriers they raise against third-party candidacies: