598
Stevens, J., dissenting
maries, ante, at 582-586, there is surely a danger that open primaries will fare no better against a First Amendment challenge than blanket primaries have.
By the District Court's count, 3 States presently have blanket primaries, while an additional 21 States have open primaries and 8 States have semiclosed primaries in which independents may participate. 169 F. 3d, at 650. This Court's willingness to invalidate the primary schemes of 3 States and cast serious constitutional doubt on the schemes of 29 others at the parties' behest is, as the District Court rightly observed, "an extraordinary intrusion into the complex and changing election laws of the States [that] . . . remove[s] from the American political system a method for candidate selection that many States consider beneficial and which in the uncertain future could take on new appeal and importance." Id., at 654.8
In my view, the First Amendment does not mandate that a putatively private association be granted the power to dictate the organizational structure of state-run, state-financed primary elections. It is not this Court's constitutional function to choose between the competing visions of what makes democracy work—party autonomy and discipline versus progressive inclusion of the entire electorate in
8 When coupled with our decision in Tashjian that a party may require a State to open up a closed primary, this intrusion has even broader implications. It is arguable that, under the Court's reasoning combined with Tashjian, the only nominating options open for the States to choose without party consent are: (1) not to have primary elections, or (2) to have what the Court calls a "nonpartisan primary"—a system presently used in Louisiana—in which candidates previously nominated by the various political parties and independent candidates compete. Ante, at 585. These two options are the same in practice because the latter is not actually a "primary" in the common, partisan sense of that term at all. Rather, it is a general election with a runoff that has few of the benefits of democratizing the party nominating process that led the Court to declare the State's ability to require nomination by primary " 'too plain for argument.' " Ante, at 572; see Lightfoot v. Eu, 964 F. 2d 865, 872-873 (CA9 1992) (explaining state interest in requiring direct partisan primary).
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