208
Opinion of Stevens, J.
tion.23 Cf. Classic, 313 U. S., at 318. The Party itself recognizes this point, for both in its brief to this Court and in its Plan of Organization, it repeatedly characterizes its own method of selecting these delegates as an "election." 24
The legislative history of § 14 supports this interpretation. Representative Bingham proposed addition of the term "party office" to the language of the section for the express purpose of extending coverage of the Act to the nominating activities of political parties. See Hearings on H. R. 6400 before Subcommittee No. 5 of the House Committee on the Judiciary, 89th Cong., 1st Sess., 456-457 (1965) (proposing coverage of "political party meetings, councils, conventions, and referendums which lead to endorsement or selection of candidates who will run in primary or general elections"). Congressional concern that the Act reach the selection of party delegates was not merely speculative. On the floor of the House, Representative Bingham expressed the importance of preventing a reprise of the fiasco of the previous year, 1964, "when the regular Democratic delegation from Mississippi to the Democratic National Convention was chosen through a series of Party caucuses and conventions from which Negroes were excluded." 111 Cong. Rec. 16273 (1965); see also Hearings on H. R. 6400, 89th Cong., 1st Sess.,
23 Quoting this very language, we have observed that candidates are nominated, not elected. Chisom v. Roemer, 501 U. S. 380, 400 (1991). It is not anomalous, therefore, to hold that § 5 applies regardless of the means of nomination.
24 See Brief for Appellees 2; App. 32 (Republican Party Plan, Art. II,
¶ 22) (defining "Party Canvass" as "a method of electing . . . delegates to Conventions"); id., at 52 (Plan, Art. VIII, § A, ¶ 3) (referring to "any election by a Mass Meeting, Party Canvass, or Convention"); id., at 56 (Plan, Art. VIII, § H, ¶ 4); id., at 23 (affidavit of David S. Johnson, Exec. Dir. of Republican Party of Virginia, ¶¶ 5, 8). The call for the state convention itself, to which appellants responded, stated: "The delegates and alternates shall be elected in county and city Mass Meetings, Conventions or Party Canvasses that shall be held between March 1, 1994 and April 1, 1994." Id., at 62.
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