596
Stevens, J., dissenting
ocratic process, it is acting not as a foe of the First Amendment but as a friend and ally.
Although I would not endorse it, I could at least understand a constitutional rule that protected a party's associational rights by allowing it to refuse to select its candidates through state-regulated primary elections. See Marchioro v. Chaney, 442 U. S. 191, 199 (1979) ("There can be no complaint that [a] party's [First Amendment] right to govern itself has been substantially burdened by [state regulation] when the source of the complaint is the party's own decision to confer critical authority on the [party governing unit being regulated]"); cf. Tashjian, 479 U. S., at 237 (Scalia, J., dissenting) ("It is beyond my understanding why the Republican Party's delegation of its democratic choice [of candidates] to a Republican Convention [rather than a primary] can be proscribed [by the State], but its delegation of that choice to nonmembers of the Party cannot"). A meaningful "right not to associate," if there is such a right in the context of limiting an electorate, ought to enable a party to insist on choosing its nominees at a convention or caucus where nonmembers could be excluded. In the real world, however, anyone can "join" a political party merely by asking for the appropriate ballot at the appropriate time or (at most) by registering within a state-defined reasonable period of time before an election; neither past voting history nor the voter's race, religion, or gender can provide a basis for the party's refusal to "associate" with an unwelcome new member. See 169 F. 3d, at 655, and n. 20. There is an obvious mismatch between a supposed constitutional right "not to associate" and a rule that turns on nothing more than the state-defined timing of the new associate's application for membership. See La Follette, 450 U. S., at 133 (Powell, J., dissenting) ("As Party affiliation becomes . . . easy for a voter to change [shortly before a particular primary election] in order to participate in [that] election, the difference between open and closed primaries loses its practical significance").
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