Cite as: 514 U. S. 779 (1995)
Opinion of the Court
elections are " 'fair and honest and . . . [that] some sort of order, rather than chaos, . . . accompan[ies] the democratic processes.' " Burdick v. Takushi, 504 U. S., at 433, quoting Storer, 415 U. S., at 730.
The provisions at issue in Storer and our other Elections Clause cases were thus constitutional because they regulated election procedures and did not even arguably impose any substantive qualification rendering a class of potential candidates ineligible for ballot position. They served the state interest in protecting the integrity and regularity of the election process, an interest independent of any attempt to evade the constitutional prohibition against the imposition of additional qualifications for service in Congress. And they did not involve measures that exclude candidates from the ballot without reference to the candidates' support in the electoral process. Our cases upholding state regulations of election procedures thus provide little support for the contention that a state-imposed ballot access restriction is constitutional when it is undertaken for the twin goals of disadvantaging a particular class of candidates and evading the dictates of the Qualifications Clauses.48
48 Nor does Clements v. Fashing, 457 U. S. 957 (1982), support petitioners. In Clements, the Court rejected First and Fourteenth Amendment challenges to Texas' so-called "resign-to-run" provision. That provision treated an elected state official's declaration of candidacy for another elected office as an automatic resignation from the office then held. We noted that the regulation was a permissible attempt to regulate state officeholders. See id., at 972 ("Appellees are elected state officeholders who contest restrictions on partisan political activity") (emphasis deleted); id., at 974, n. 1 (Stevens, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment) ("The fact that appellees hold state office is sufficient to justify a restriction on their ability to run for other office that is not imposed on the public generally"). As the Ninth Circuit recognized in upholding a similar resign-to-run statute from Arizona: "The burden on candidacy . . . is indirect and attributable to a desire to regulate state officeholders and not to impose additional qualifications to serving in Congress." Joyner v. Mof-ford, 706 F. 2d 1523, 1528 (1983); see also Signorelli v. Evans, 637 F. 2d
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