Cite as: 530 U. S. 567 (2000)
Opinion of the Court
produce more voters), and suffers from the same defect. As for the protection of privacy: The specific privacy interest at issue is not the confidentiality of medical records or personal finances, but confidentiality of one's party affiliation. Even if (as seems unlikely) a scheme for administering a closed primary could not be devised in which the voter's declaration of party affiliation would not be public information, we do not think that the State's interest in assuring the privacy of this piece of information in all cases can conceivably be considered a "compelling" one. If such information were generally so sacrosanct, federal statutes would not require a declaration of party affiliation as a condition of appointment to certain offices. See, e. g., 47 U. S. C. § 154(b)(5) ("[M]aximum number of commissioners [of the Federal Communications Commission] who may be members of the same political party shall be a number equal to the least number of commissioners which constitutes a majority of the full membership of the Commission"); 47 U. S. C. § 396(c)(1) (1994 ed., Supp. III) (no more than five members of Board of Directors of Corporation for Public Broadcasting may be of same party); 42 U. S. C. § 2000e-4(a) (no more than three members of Equal Employment Opportunity Commission may be of same party).
Finally, we may observe that even if all these state interests were compelling ones, Proposition 198 is not a narrowly tailored means of furthering them. Respondents could protect them all by resorting to a nonpartisan blanket primary. Generally speaking, under such a system, the State determines what qualifications it requires for a candidate to have a place on the primary ballot—which may include nomination by established parties and voter-petition requirements for independent candidates. Each voter, regardless of party affiliation, may then vote for any candidate, and the top two vote getters (or however many the State prescribes) then move on to the general election. This system has all the characteristics of the partisan blanket primary, save the
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