Ayers-Schaffner v. DiStefano

• Decision Date: 16 September 1994
• Docket Number: No. 94-1884,AYERS-SCHAFFNER,94-1884
• Citation: 37 F.3d 726
• Parties: M. Janice, et al., Plaintiffs, Appellees, v. Joseph R. DISTEFANO, et al., Defendants, Appellants. . Heard
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

Page 726

37 F.3d 726

M. Janice AYERS-SCHAFFNER, et al., Plaintiffs, Appellees, v. Joseph R. DISTEFANO, et al., Defendants, Appellants.

No. 94-1884.

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

Heard Sept. 16, 1994.

Decided Sept. 30, 1994.

Anthony J. Bucci, Jr., Providence, RI, for appellants.

Michael DiBiase, Providence, RI, for appellees.

Before TORRUELLA, Chief Judge, COFFIN, Senior Circuit Judge, and KEETON ^*, District Judge.

COFFIN, Senior Circuit Judge.

This case poses an interesting, and readily answerable, constitutional question: can state election officials restrict the right to vote in a new, curative election to those who participated in the original, defective election? The district court found no state interest served by such a limitation, and rejected it as unconstitutional, 860 F.Supp. 918. We agree, and thus affirm the district court's order directing that the contested new election be open to all registered and qualified voters. ¹

I. Factual Background

On June 7, 1994, a nonpartisan primary election was held for three seats on the Warwick School Committee. Voters were permitted to vote for up to two candidates for the three open positions. After the election, as a result of a protest filed by several of the 15 candidates, the Rhode Island Board of Elections ruled that each voter should have been limited to a single vote. The Board also found that there was a probability that the election results would have been different had the correct procedure been used, and it consequently ordered that a new election be conducted. It further ruled that the new election be limited to those candidates and voters who participated in the original balloting.

This action followed. ² The plaintiffs are registered voters in the City of Warwick who were eligible to vote in the first election but did not. They wish to be allowed to vote in the second one. They brought suit on behalf of themselves and all similarly situated Warwick residents against the Board of Elections, alleging violations of their rights of free speech, association, equal protection, and due process as guaranteed by the First and Fourteenth Amendments. ³

The district court ruled in their favor, finding that no state interest justified the limitation on voters. The Board now appeals, claiming that the district court erred in applying the applicable precedent to the circumstances of this case. The Board claims that its restriction on voters imposes a minimal burden on the plaintiffs while serving legitimate and compelling state interests.

Like the district court, and substantially for the reasons it gave, we conclude that the Board's notion of the applicable constitutional principles is off the mark.

II. Discussion

In its simplest form, this case asks us to decide whether a state may condition the right to vote in one election on whether that right was exercised in a preceding election. So stated, the case is hardly worthy of discussion. The right to vote " 'is of the most fundamental significance under our constitutional structure,' " Burdick v. Takushi, --- U.S. ----, ----, 112 S.Ct. 2059, 2063, 119 L.Ed.2d 245 (1992), and depriving a qualified voter of the right to cast a ballot because of failure to vote in an earlier election is almost inconceivable. See generally Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533, 554-55, 84 S.Ct. 1362, 1377-78, 12 L.Ed.2d 506 (1964) (quoted in Griffin v. Burns, 570 F.2d 1065, 1075 (1st Cir.1978) ("[A]ny restrictions on [the right to vote] strike at the heart of representative government."))

The Board contends that this case is not that one because the second election here is not a new, independent election, but simply a recreation of the defective primary. It asserts that this distinction renders the right-to-vote caselaw largely inapposite, and that no precedent bars its effort to hold a lawful version of the defective election by restricting participation to the original voters and candidates. ⁴ The Board maintains that this plan imposes, at most, only a minimal burden on the plaintiffs because of the easy access provided to the regularly scheduled election. And it cites a litany of purposes served by its plan. See infra at n. 6.

The Board's effort to distinguish this case is flawed in several respects. First, we cannot accept the Board's suggestion that the second election here is free from the requirements of a genuine election because its purpose is simply to replicate a previous event. The original election was defective and invalid, and the Board deemed its results unreliable. The primary objective of the second election therefore must be viewed as identical to that of the original one, to choose through valid procedures the candidates supported by a majority of the eligible voters. To exclude plaintiffs from the second election is to exclude them from the only primary that will determine the candidates for the school committee offices.

Moreover, the goal of reconstructing the original election is, at best, an illusory one. Presumably, some of the voters who voted the first time will be unable, for various reasons, to participate in the new election. Unexpected trips and illnesses, or even death, may intervene. Some voters no longer may be eligible, having moved from the area. In addition, some undetermined number of voters in the original election voted only for the bond issue that was on the ballot, and some of them could be expected to vote this time for the school committee candidates. An identical match of voters is therefore extremely unlikely.

The second flaw is found in the Board's suggestion that the burden imposed by its action is slight because plaintiffs had ample opportunity to vote in the first election. This is tantamount to a claim that plaintiffs waived their right to vote in the second election by failing to vote in the first. However characterized, the contention is wholly without force.

While it is true that plaintiffs knowingly gave up the only opportunity they expected to have to vote in the primary, they did not thereby waive their interest in the outcome of the election. Nor did they demonstrate any willingness to forego a second chance to vote if circumstances should make a curative election necessary. In the absence of any advance warning that failure to vote in the first election would preclude voting in the second, their lack of participation in the original balloting cannot in any respect be viewed as a waiver of the right to vote in the new primary. And, while access to the first election may have been easily achieved, what is before us is the total denial of the right to vote in the only primary with any significance in the school committee race. That burden is undeniably severe, and it is in no way lessened by the past opportunity to vote in an invalid election. ⁵

Third, and most significantly, the Board is unable to articulate any meaningful interest served by its voter restriction. Of the seven separate interests listed in its brief, ⁶ one is facially meritless, ⁷ and the remainder all rest on the premise that limiting the pool of eligible voters to those who actually voted in the first election is necessary to preserve the integrity of either the original or overall electoral process. As to the original election, it is precisely because the Board found the process to be vulnerable that a new election was scheduled, and any concern for preserving the original votes and outcome is therefore without substance. Indeed, the Board explicitly found "a probability that the order of finish of the[ ] candidates might have been altered" had the correct procedure been followed. Preserving what would have been the outcome of the election had it been properly conducted, while a legitimate objective, is, as we have discussed earlier, not feasible in light of the inevitable changes in the availability of the original voters.

With the interest in electoral integrity either inappropriately linked to the original election, or unable to be served as it relates to that election, the only interest in integrity that remains concerns the overall process for choosing school committee candidates. The Board's restriction on voters does not serve this interest.

Once the Board wiped the slate clean by nullifying the first election, what needed to be recreated was the "democratic process" surrounding the selection of school committee candidates, not the particular conditions surrounding the original election. See Griffin, 570 F.2d at 1079 n. 14 ("The Constitution protects the right of all citizens to democratic processes, not the right of any particular candidate or voters to a certain result.") The foundation of our "democratic process" is the right of all qualified voters to cast their votes effectively. See, e.g., Burdick, --- U.S. at ----, 112 S.Ct. at 2063; Anderson v. Celebrezze, 460 U.S. 780, 787, 103 S.Ct. 1564, 1569, 75 L.Ed.2d 547 (1983); Wesberry v. Sanders, 376 U.S. 1, 17-18, 84 S.Ct. 526, 534-35, 11 L.Ed.2d 481 (1964); Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. at 554-55, 84 S.Ct. at 1377-78. Depriving eligible voters of the right to vote in the "effective" election shakes that foundation and weakens, rather than supports, the broad goal of preserving the integrity of the electoral process. Indeed, it imposes a penalty for the past failure to vote, precisely the course of action we deemed transparently unconstitutional at the outset of our discussion.

The Board's effort to characterize its order as merely a "time, place and manner" restriction blinks reality. The states' authority to regulate elections stems from a recognition, embodied in the Constitution, that elections must be structured carefully to ensure that they are fair and honest, and so that "some sort of order, rather than chaos, is to accompany the democratic processes," Burdick, --- U.S. at ----, 112 S.Ct. at 2063; (quoting Storer v. Brown, 415 U.S. 724, 730, 94 S.Ct. 1274, 1279, 39 L.Ed.2d 714 (1974)). This authority,...