844
Kennedy, J., concurring
parte Yarbrough, supra; Terral v. Burke Constr. Co., 257 U. S. 529 (1922); United States v. Classic, supra; United States v. Guest, 383 U. S. 745 (1966); Shapiro v. Thompson, 394 U. S. 618 (1969). Federal privileges and immunities may seem limited in their formulation by comparison with the expansive definition given to the privileges and immunities attributed to state citizenship, see Slaughter-House Cases, supra, at 78; Hague, supra, at 520 (opinion of Stone, J.), but that federal rights flow to the people of the United States by virtue of national citizenship is beyond dispute.
Not the least of the incongruities in the position advanced by Arkansas is the proposition, necessary to its case, that it can burden the rights of resident voters in federal elections by reason of the manner in which they earlier had exercised it. If the majority of the voters had been successful in selecting a candidate, they would be penalized from exercising that same right in the future. Quite apart from any First Amendment concerns, see Williams v. Rhodes, 393 U. S. 23, 30 (1968); Anderson v. Celebrezze, 460 U. S. 780, 786-788 (1983), neither the law nor federal theory allows a State to burden the exercise of federal rights in this manner. See Terral v. Burke Constr. Co., supra, at 532; Shapiro v. Thompson, supra, at 629-631. Indeed, as one of the "right[s] of the citizen[s] of this great country, protected by implied guarantees of its Constitution," the Court identified the right " 'to come to the seat of government . . . to share its offices, to engage in administering its functions.' " Slaughter-House Cases, supra, at 79 (quoting Crandall v. Nevada, 6 Wall., at 44). This observation serves to illustrate the extent of the State's attempted interference with the federal right to vote (and the derivative right to serve if elected by majority vote) in a congressional election, rights that do not derive from the state power in the first instance but that belong to the voter in his or her capacity as a citizen of the United States.
It is maintained by our dissenting colleagues that the State of Arkansas seeks nothing more than to grant its peo-
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