MACDOUGALL ET AL. v. GREEN, GOVERNOR OF ILLINOIS, ET AL.
No. 348
Supreme Court of the United States
October 21, 1948
335 U.S. 281
Melvin F. Wingersky argued the causе for Flynn, County Clerk, et al., appellees. With him on the brief was Gordon B. Nash.
PER CURIAM.
This action was brought before a three-judge court convened in the Northern District of Illinois under
The action arises frоm the finding of the State Officers Electoral Board that appellants had not obtained the requisite number of signatures from the requisite number
It is clear that the requirement of two hundred signatures from at least fifty counties gives to the voters of the less рopulous counties of Illinois the power completely to block the nomination of candidates whose support is confined to geographically limited areas. But the State is entitled to deem this power not disproportionate: of 25,000 signatures required, only 9,800, or 39%, need be distributed; the remaining 61% may be obtained from a single county. And Cook County, the largest, contains not more than 52% of the State‘s voters. It is allowable State policy to require that candidates for state-wide office should have support not limited to a concentrated locality. This is not a unique policy. See
On the record before us, we need not pass upon purely local questions, also urged by appellants, having no federal constitutional aspect.
Judgment affirmed.
MR. JUSTICE RUTLEDGE.
In its facts and legal issues this case is closely analogous to Colegrove v. Green, 328 U. S. 549. It presents serious constitutional questions crucial to the validity of Illinois election procedures and their application to the imminently impending general election. That a bare majority of this Court resolve them one way and three others hold opposing views only emphasizes their substantial character and supreme importance. These qualities are not diminished by the fact that the Attorney General of Illinois, appearing for the three members of the so-called “State Certifying Board,”1 has conceded in his brief the
validity of appellants’ position and at the bar of this Court has confessed error in the decision of the District Court. Nor is it insignificant or irrelevant that the application of the statutory procedures made by the state officials in practical effect denies to a substantial body of qualified voters the right to exercise their suffrage in behalf of candidates of their choice.
Forced by the exigencies of their situation, appellants havе invoked federal equity jurisdiction in vindication of their rights. They seek injunctive relief, in effect, to compel placing the names of their candidates upon the ballot for the general election to be held on November 2. For present purposes we may assume that appellants have acted with all possible dispatch. Even sо, we find ourselves confronted on the eve of the election with the alternatives of denying the relief sought or of directing the issuance of an injunction.
This choice, in my opinion, presents the crucial question and the only one necessarily or properly now to be decided. Beyond the constitutional questions it poses delicatе problems concerning the propriety of granting the relief in the prevailing circumstances. Even if we assume that appellants’ constitutional rights have been violated, the questions arise whether, in those circumstances, the equity arm of the federal courts can now be extended to
Every reason existing in Colegrove v. Green, supra, which seemed to me compelling to require this Court to decline to exercise its equity jurisdiction and to decide the constitutional questions is present here. See the opinion concurring in the result, 328 U. S. at 564. Indeed the circumstances are more exigent and therefore more compelling to that conclusion.
We are on the eve of the national election. But twelve days remain. Necessarily some of these would be consumed in remanding the cause to the District Court and in its consideration, formulation and issuance of an injunction in essentially specific terms. The ballots, as certified by the state officials, are in process of printing and distribution. Absentee ballots have been distributed. Illinois is one of the more populous states. Millions of ballots will be required, not only in the state but in Cook County alone. It is true that, on the short record before us and in the necessarily brief time available for preparing both the record and the briefs, appellees who oppose granting the relief have not made an absolutely conclusive factual showing that new ballots, containing the names of appellants’ candidates, could not pоssibly be printed and distributed for use at the election. But they suggest with good reason that this could not be done. The task would be gigantic. Even with the mobilization of every possible resource, it is gravely doubtful that it could be accomplished. The risk would be very large that it could not be done. Even if it could for all except absentee voters, they would be disfranchised. Issuance of the injunction sought would invalidate the ballots
The sum of these considerations, without regard to others not now necessary to state, forces me to conclude that the relief sought could be had at this late stage in the electoral process only at the gravest risk of disrupting that process completely in Illinois or of disfranchising Illinois voters in perhaps much greater numbers than those whose interests appellants represent. That is a risk which, in my judgment, federal courts of equity should not undertake and indeed are not free to undertake within the historic limits оf their equity jurisdiction.
Accordingly, I express no opinion concerning the constitutional and other questions presented. As in Colegrove v. Green, supra, I think the case is one in which, for the reasons stated, this Court may properly, and should, decline to exercise its jurisdiction in equity. Accordingly, but solely for this reason, I agree that the judgment refusing injunctive relief should be affirmed.
MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS, with whom MR. JUSTICE BLACK and MR. JUSTICE MURPHY concur, dissenting.
I think that the 1935 amendment of the Illinois Election Code,
That statute requires the nominating petition of a new political party, which places candidates on the ballot for the general election, to contain 200 signaturеs from each of at least 50 of the 102 counties in the state. The statute does not attempt to make the required signatures proportionate to the population of each county. One effect of this requirement is that the electorate in 49 of the counties which contain 87% of the registered voters could not form a new pоlitical party and place its candidates on
Free and honest elections are the very foundation of our republican form of government. We are dealing here with important political rights of the people—the voting for electors providеd by
None would deny that a state law giving some citizens twice the vote of other citizens in either the primary or general election would lack that equality which the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees. See Nixon v. Herndon, 273 U. S. 536. The dilution of political rights may be as complete and effective if the same discrimination appears in the procedure prescribed for nominating petitions. See State v. Junkin, 85 Neb. 1, 122 N. W. 473.
It is not enough to say that this lаw can stand that test because it is designed to require statewide support for the launching of a new political party rather than support from a few localities. There is no attempt here, as I have said, to make the required signatures even approximately proportionate to the distribution of voters among the various сounties of the state. No such proportionate allocation could of course be mathematically exact. Nor would it be required. But when, as here, the law applies a rigid, arbitrary formula to sparsely settled counties and populous counties alike, it offers no basis whatever to justify giving greater weight to the individual votes of оne group of citizens than to those of another group. This legislation therefore has the same inherent infirmity as that which some of us saw in Colegrove v. Green, 328 U. S. 549, 569. The fact that the Constitution itself sanctions inequalities in some phases of our political system1 does not justify us in allowing a state to create
Notes
Federal courts should be most hesitant to use the injunction in state elections. See Wilson v. North Carolina, 169 U. S. 586, 596. If federal courts undertook the role of superintendence, disruption of the whole electoral рrocess might result, and the elective system that is vital to our government might be paralyzed. Cf. Johnson v. Stevenson, 170 F. 2d 108. The equity court, moreover, must always be alert in the exercise of its discretion to make sure that its decree will not be a futile and ineffective thing. But the case, as made before us, does not indicate that either of those considerations should detеr us in striking down this unconstitutional statute and in freeing the impending Illinois election of its impediments. The state officials who are responsible for the election and who at this bar confessed error in the decision of the
republic, partaking both of the national and federal character, the government ought to be founded on a mixture of the рrinciples of proportional and equal representation.
“the equal vote allowed to each State is at once a constitutional recognition of the portion of sovereignty remaining in the individual States, and an instrument for preserving that residuary sovereignty. So far the equality ought to be no less acceptable to thе large than to the small States; since they are not less solicitous to guard, by every possible expedient, against an improper consolidation of the States into one simple republic.
“Another advantage accruing from this ingredient in the constitution of the Senate is, the additional impediment it must prove against improper acts of legislation. No law or resolution can now be passed without the concurrence, first, of a majority of the people, and then, of a majority of the States.”