Cite as: 517 U. S. 186 (1996)
Opinion of Stevens, J.
the privilege of participating in the selection of the Party's nominee for the United States Senate is equally a practice or procedure relating to voting whether the selection is made by primary election or by a "convention" in which every voter willing to pay the fee is eligible to cast a vote. A primary election would not cease to be a practice relating to voting if the Party imposed such a high fee that only 14,000 voters cast ballots; nor should a "convention" performing the same electoral function as a primary avoid coverage because fewer voters participate in the process than normally vote in a primary. As was true in Sheffield, "the District Court's interpretation of the Act . . . makes § 5 coverage depend upon a factor completely irrelevant to the Act's purposes, and thereby permits precisely the kind of circumvention of congressional policy that § 5 was designed to prevent." 435 U. S., at 117. It would undermine the Act to permit " '[s]uch a variation in the result from so slight a change in form.' " Terry v. Adams, 345 U. S., at 465, n. 1 (quoting Smith v. Allwright, 321 U. S., at 661).
Section 5 coverage of nominating conventions follows directly from our decision in Terry. Although called a "primary," the Jaybird election was the equivalent of the Party's nominating convention, for it did not involve the State's electoral apparatus in even the slightest way—neither to supply election officials, nor ballots, nor polling places. See 345 U. S., at 471 (opinion of Frankfurter, J.). In fact, the Jay-birds went far beyond the Party in immunizing their nomination process from the State's control. The Jaybird nominee did not receive any form of automatic ballot access. He filed individually as a candidate in the Democratic primary, paid the filing fee, and complied with all requirements to which other candidates were subject. Id., at 486-487 (Minton, J., dissenting). No mention of the nominee's Jaybird affiliation was ever made, either on the primary or on the general eleczen." U. S. Commission on Civil Rights, Political Participation 178 (May 1968).
215
Page: Index Previous 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007