298
Scalia, J., dissenting
signature requirement (as there was in Socialist Workers Party) for any single office; each candidate (and the party) for each district election and each countywide election need obtain no more than 25,000 signatures. What creates "effectively," as the Court says, a sort of heightened signature minimum is the requirement that a new party run a "complete slate," i. e., a candidate in each of the subdivision's districts. By virtue of that requirement, no one can run as a new-party candidate in any district unless there are not only 25,000 signatures for him in his own district, but also 25,000 votes for the party's candidate in each of the other districts. Such indirect consequences of a "complete slate" requirement were, of course, not at issue in Socialist Workers Party, which involved a single election for an at-large position. Thus, Socialist Workers Party is not at all dispositive of these cases.
It seems clear that the "complete slate" rule advances a legitimate state interest. It is reasonable to require a purported "party," which presumably has policy plans for the political subdivision, to run candidates in all the districts that elect the multimember board governing the subdivision. Otherwise, it is less a "party" than an election committee for one member of the board. The Court ultimately concedes this, and concedes that this state interest was not involved (and therefore not taken into account) in Socialist Workers Party. Ante, at 293-294. It nonetheless argues that this makes no difference, because: (1) Illinois could have achieved its interest in multidistrict support for the party by requiring that some proportion of the total signatures be from each district, but requiring no more than a 25,000 total, ibid.; and (2) multidistrict support is not an interest that Illinois considers important, since it "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," ante, at 294.
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