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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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system provides. The fusion candidacy does not threaten to divide the legislature and create significant risks of factionalism, which is the principal risk proponents of the two-party system point to. But it does provide a means by which voters with viewpoints not adequately represented by the platforms of the two major parties can indicate to a particular candidate that-in addition to his support for the major party views-he should be responsive to the views of the minor party whose support for him was demonstrated where political parties demonstrate support-on the ballot.

The strength of the two-party system-and of each of its major components-is the product of the power of the ideas, the traditions, the candidates, and the voters that constitute the parties.ll It demeans the strength of the two-party system to assume that the major parties need to rely on laws that discriminate against independent voters and minor parties in order to preserve their positions of power.12 Indeed,

S. Rosenstone, R. Behr, & E. Lazarus, Third Parties in America: Citizen Response to Major Party Failure 4-9 (1984).

11 The Court of Appeals recognized that fusion politics could have an important role in preserving this value when it struck down the fusion ban. "[R]ather than jeopardizing the integrity of the election system, consensual multiple party nomination may invigorate it by fostering more competition, participation, and representation in American politics." McKenna, 73 F. 3d, at 199.

12 The experience in New York with fusion politics provides considerable evidence that neither political stability nor the ultimate strength of the two major parties is truly risked by the existence of successful minor parties. More generally, "the presence of one or even two significant third parties has not led to a proliferation of parties, nor to the destruction of basic democratic institutions." Mazmanian 69; see also The Supreme Court, 1982 Term-Independent Candidates and Minority Parties, 97 Harv. L. Rev. 1, 162 (1983) ("American political stability does not depend on a two-party oligopoly .... [H]istorical experience in this country demonstrate[s] that minor parties and independent candidacies are compatible with long-term political stability. Moreover, there is no reason to believe that eliminating restrictions on political minorities would change the basic structure of the two-party system in this country").




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it is a central theme of our jurisprudence that the entire electorate, which necessarily includes the members of the major parties, will benefit from robust competition in ideas and governmental policies that "'is at the core of our electoral process and of the First Amendment freedoms.'" Anderson, 460 U. S., at 802, quoting Williams v. Rhodes, 393 U. S., at 32.

In my opinion legislation that would otherwise be unconstitutional because it burdens First Amendment interests and discriminates against minor political parties cannot survive simply because it benefits the two major parties. Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.

JUSTICE SOUTER, dissenting.

I join Parts I and II of JUSTICE STEVENS'S dissent, agreeing as I do that none of the concerns advanced by the State suffices to justify the burden of the challenged statutes on respondent's First Amendment interests. I also agree with JUSTICE STEVENS'S view, set out in the first paragraph of Part III, that the State does not assert the interest in preserving "the traditional two-party system" upon which the majority repeatedly relies in upholding Minnesota's statutes, see, e. g., ante, at 367 ("The Constitution permits the Minnesota Legislature to decide that political stability is best served through a healthy two-party system"). Actually, Minnesota's statement of the "important regulatory concerns advanced by the State's ban on ballot fusion," Brief for Petitioners 40, contains no reference whatsoever to the "twoparty system," nor even any explicit reference to "political stability" generally. See id., at 40-50.

To be sure, the State does assert its intention to prevent "party splintering," id., at 46-50, which may not be separable in the abstract from a desire to preserve political stabil-




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ity.l 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 twoparty 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").




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The Last Party System: Decay of Consensus, 1932-1980, in The Evolution of American Electoral Systems 219-225, (P. Kleppner et al. eds. 1981), and that the overall influence of the parties in the political process has decreased considerably, see, e. g., Cutler, Party Government Under the American Constitution, 134 U. Penn. L. Rev. 25 (1987); Sundquist, Party Decay and the Capacity to Govern, in The Future of American Political Parties: The Challenge of Governance 42-69 (J. Fleishman ed. 1982). In the wake of such studies, it may not be unreasonable to infer that the two-party system is in some jeopardy. See, e. g., Lowi, N. Y. Times, Aug. 23, 1992, Magazine, p. 28 ("[H]istorians will undoubtably focus on 1992 as the beginning of the end of America's twoparty system").
Surely the majority is right that States "have a strong interest in the stability of their political systems," ante, at 366, that is, in preserving a political system capable of governing effectively. If it could be shown that the disappearance of the two-party system would undermine that interest, and that permitting fusion candidacies poses a substantial threat to the two-party scheme, there might well be a sufficient predicate for recognizing the constitutionality of the state action presented by this case. Right now, however, no State has attempted even to make this argument, and I would therefore leave its consideration for another day.
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