Cite as: 520 U. S. 351 (1997)
Souter, J., dissenting
ity.1 But in fact the State has less comprehensive concerns; the primary dangers posed by what it calls "major-party splintering and factionalism," id., at 47, are said to be those of "turn[ing] the general election ballot into a forum for venting intraparty squabbles," ibid., and reducing elections to "a thinly disguised ballot-issue campaign," id., at 49. Nowhere does the State even intimate that the splintering it wishes to avert might cause or hasten the demise of the two-party system. In these circumstances, neither the State's point about "splintering," nor its tentative reference to "political stability" at oral argument, n. 1, infra, may fairly be assimilated to the interest posited by the Court of preserving the "two-party system." Accordingly, because I agree with Justice Stevens, ante, at 378, that our election cases restrict our consideration to "the precise interests put forward by the State as justifications for the burden imposed by its rule," Anderson v. Celebrezze, 460 U. S. 780, 789 (1983),2 I
would judge the challenged statutes only on the interests the State has raised in their defense and would hold them unconstitutional.
I am, however, unwilling to go the further distance of considering and rejecting the majority's "preservation of the two-party system" rationale. For while Minnesota has made no such argument before us, I cannot discount the possibility of a forceful one. There is considerable consensus that party loyalty among American voters has declined significantly in the past four decades, see, e. g., W. Crotty, American Parties in Decline 26-34 (2d ed. 1984); Jensen,
1 Indeed, at oral argument, the State did hesitantly suggest that it "does have an interest, a generalized interest in preserving, in a sense, political stability . . . ." Tr. of Oral Arg. 26.
2 See also Edenfield v. Fane, 507 U. S. 761, 768 (1993) (explaining that the midlevel scrutiny that applies in commercial speech cases, which is similar to what we apply here, "[u]nlike rational-basis review . . . does not permit us to supplant the precise interests put forward by the State with other suppositions").
383
Page: Index Previous 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007