380
Stevens, J., dissenting
directly with the States' interests in political stability. Systems of proportional representation, for example, may tend toward factionalism and fragile coalitions that diminish legislative effectiveness. In the context of fusion candidacies, the risks to political stability are extremely attenuated.8 Of
course, the reason minor parties so ardently support fusion politics is because it allows the parties to build up a greater base of support, as potential minor party members realize that a vote for the smaller party candidate is not necessarily a "wasted" vote. Eventually, a minor party might gather sufficient strength that—were its members so inclined—it could successfully run a candidate not endorsed by any major party, and legislative coalition building will be made more difficult by the presence of third-party legislators. But the risks to political stability in that scenario are speculative at best.9
In some respects, the fusion candidacy is the best marriage of the virtues of the minor party challenge to entrenched viewpoints 10 and the political stability that the two-party
8 Even in a system that allows fusion, a candidate for election must assemble majority support, so the State's concern cannot logically be about risks to political stability in the particular election in which the fusion candidate is running.
9 In fact, Minnesota's expressed concern that fusion candidacies would stifle political diversity because minor parties would not put additional names on the ballot seems directly contradictory to the majority's imposed interest in the stable two-party system. The tension between the Court's rationale for its decision and the State's actually articulated interests is one of the reasons I do not believe the Court can legitimately consider interests not relied on by the State, especially in a context where the burden imposed and the interest justifying it must have some relationship.
10 "[A]s an outlet for frustration, often as a creative force and a sort of conscience, as an ideological governor to keep major parties from speeding off into an abyss of mindlessness, and even just as a technique for strengthening a group's bargaining position for the future, the minor party would have to be invented if it did not come into existence regularly enough." A. Bickel, Reform and Continuity 80 (1971); see also
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