Bound Volume 514 - Supreme Court of the United States

514us3$60I 06-15-98 09:38:30 PAGES OPINPGT
Cite as: 514 U. S. 779 (1995)
Opinion of the Court
write-in candidates have only a slight chance of victory. 45
But even if petitioners are correct that incumbents may occasionally
win reelection as write-in candidates, there is no denying
that the ballot restrictions will make it significantly
more difficult for the barred candidate to win the election.
In our view, an amendment with the avowed purpose and
obvious effect of evading the requirements of the Qualifications
Clauses by handicapping a class of candidates cannot
stand. To argue otherwise is to suggest that the Framers
spent significant time and energy in debating and crafting
Clauses that could be easily evaded. More importantly,
allowing States to evade the Qualifications Clauses by
“dress[ing] eligibility to stand for Congress in ballot access
clothing” trivializes the basic principles of our democracy
that underlie those Clauses. Petitioners’ argument treats
the Qualifications Clauses not as the embodiment of a grand
principle, but rather as empty formalism. “ ‘It is inconceivable
that guaranties embedded in the Constitution of the
United States may thus be manipulated out of existence.’ ”
Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 364 U. S. 339, 345 (1960), quoting
Frost & Frost Trucking Co. v. Railroad Comm’n of Cal., 271
U. S. 583, 594 (1926).
45 We noted in Lubin v. Panish, 415 U. S. 709 (1974), that “[t]he realities
of the electoral process ...strongly suggest that ‘access’ via write-in votes
falls far short of access in terms of having the name of the candidate on
the ballot.” Id., at 719, n. 5; see also Anderson v. Celebrezze, 460 U. S.
780, 799, n. 26 (1983) (“We have previously noted that [a write-in] opportunity
is not an adequate substitute for having the candidates name appear
on the printed ballot”); United States v. Classic, 313 U. S. 299, 313 (1941)
(“Even if . . . voters may lawfully write into their ballots, cast at the
general election, the name of a candidate rejected at the primary and have
their ballots counted, the practical operation of the primary law ...is
such as to impose serious restrictions upon the choice of candidates by the
voters”); Burdick v. Takushi, 504 U. S. 428, 437, n. 7 (1992) (“If the dissent
were correct in suggesting that requiring primary voters to select a specific
ballot impermissibly burdened the right to vote, it is clear under our
decisions that the availability of a write-in option would not provide an
adequate remedy”).
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