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Opinion of the Court
signature requirement at 25,000. But cf. Moore v. Ogilvie, 394 U. S. 814 (1969). While we express no opinion as to the constitutionality of any such requirement, what we have said demonstrates that Illinois has not chosen the most narrowly tailored means of advancing even the interest that Reed suggests.
Nor is that the only weakness of Reed's rationale. Illinois does not require a new party fielding candidates solely for statewide office to apportion its nominating signatures among the various counties or other political subdivisions of the State. See § 10-2; Communist Party of Illinois v. State Bd. of Elections, 518 F. 2d 517 (CA7), cert. denied, 423 U. S. 986 (1975). Organizers of a new party could therefore win access to the statewide ballot, but not the Cook County ballot, by collecting all 25,000 signatures from the county's city district. But if the State deems it unimportant to ensure that new statewide parties enjoy any distribution of support, it requires elusive logic to demonstrate a serious state interest in demanding such a distribution for new local parties. Thus, as in Socialist Workers Party, the State's requirements for access to the statewide ballot become criteria in the first instance for judging whether rules of access to local ballots are narrow enough to pass constitutional muster. Reed has adduced no justification for the disparity here.10
10 To an extent, history explains the anomaly. Moore v. Ogilvie, 394 U. S. 814 (1969), together with the Seventh Circuit's decision in Communist Party of Illinois v. State Bd. of Elections, 518 F. 2d 517 (1975), left the ballot-access requirements for statewide elections less stringent, for the first time, than the requirements for any local ballot. These were the same legal developments, in fact, that led to the anomaly at issue in Illinois Bd. of Elections v. Socialist Workers Party, 440 U. S. 173 (1979). Yet, as we noted there, an explanation is not the same as a justification. Id., at 187; see also id., at 189 (Stevens, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment); id., at 190-191 (Rehnquist, J., concurring in judgment). "Historical accident, without more, cannot constitute a compelling state interest." Id., at 187.
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