Libertarian Party of Virginia v. Davis, 84-2071

• Decision Date: 08 July 1985
• Docket Number: No. 84-2071,84-2071
• Citation: 766 F.2d 865
• Parties: LIBERTARIAN PARTY OF VIRGINIA; Marguerite Wagner; Dallas Cooley, M.D.; Henry Thrasher; Scott Bowden; Jim Elwood; Alvin Anders, Appellants, v. Earl DAVIS, Chairman State Board of Elections; A. George Cook, 3rd Vice Chairman, State Board of Elections; Susan Fitz-Hugh, Secretary State Board of Elections, Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

Page 865

766 F.2d 865

LIBERTARIAN PARTY OF VIRGINIA; Marguerite Wagner; Dallas Cooley, M.D.; Henry Thrasher; Scott Bowden; Jim Elwood; Alvin Anders, Appellants, v. Earl DAVIS, Chairman State Board of Elections; A. George Cook, 3rd Vice Chairman, State Board of Elections Susan Fitz-Hugh, Secretary State Board of Elections, Appellees.

No. 84-2071.

United States Court of Appeals Fourth Circuit.

Argued May 8, 1985.

Decided July 8, 1985.

James J. Featherstone, Washington, D.C. (Santarelli & Bond; Richard E. Gardiner, Washington, D.C., on brief), for appellants.

William J. Bridge, Asst. Atty. Gen., Richmond, Va. (Gerald L. Baliles, Atty. Gen., Richmond, Va., on brief), for appellees.

Before RUSSELL and SPROUSE, Circuit Judges, and KNAPP, Senior United States District Judge, for the Southern District of West Virginia, sitting by designation.

SPROUSE, Circuit Judge:

Under Virginia election laws, a political organization not qualifying as a "political party" must petition to secure a place on the Virginia ballot for its presidential and vice-presidential nominees. The petition must be signed by one-half of one percent of all registered voters, including at least two hundred voters from each congressional district, and each signature must be witnessed and attested by a qualified voter from the same congressional district as the petition signer. ¹ The Libertarian Party of Virginia appeals from the district court's Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(6) dismissal of its action challenging the constitutionality of this provision, 591 F.Supp. 1561. We affirm.

The Libertarian Party, which has been in existence since 1980, does not constitute a "political party" because it did not poll 10% of the vote in the immediately preceding statewide election as required by the state statutory definition. ² Consequently, access to the ballot for electors of the Party was limited to the avenue provided by Sec. 24.1-159. In its section 1983 ³ declaratory and injunctive action against the Virginia State Board of Elections (Board) the Libertarian Party asserts that the requirements of Sec. 24.1-159 violate rights protected by the first and fourteenth amendments to the United States Constitution. The Libertarian Party below and on appeal attacked the provisions requiring (1) that the petition include the signatures of at least 200 qualified voters from each congressional district (the distribution requirement), and (2) that the signatures be witnessed and attested by a qualified voter from the same congressional district as the qualified voter signing the petition (the witness requirement). In other words, its principal argument is that requiring petition signatures to be witnessed and obtained distributively trangresses constitutional boundaries recently established in this first and fourteenth amendment area. We disagree and affirm the action of the district court.

It is abundantly clear that we must ensure that ballot access restrictions do not infringe two fundamental constitutional rights--the right to associate for the advancement of political beliefs and the right of qualified voters to cast their votes effectively. Illinois State Board of Elections v. Socialist Workers Party, 440 U.S. 173, 184, 99 S.Ct. 983, 990, 59 L.Ed.2d 230 (1979). As the Supreme Court has announced with equal clarity, however, elections properly must be regulated "if they are to be fair and honest and if some sort of order, rather than chaos, is to accompany the democratic processes." Storer v. Brown, 415 U.S. 724, 730, 94 S.Ct. 1274, 1279, 39 L.Ed.2d 714 (1974).

This creates an obvious tension which the Supreme Court has recognized. In Anderson v. Celebrezze, 460 U.S. 780, 103 S.Ct. 1564, 75 L.Ed.2d 547 (1983), the Court articulated a balancing test to resolve challenges to a state's ballot access requirements:

[A] court must resolve such a challenge by an analytical process that parallels its work in ordinary litigation. It must first consider the character and magnitude of the asserted injury to the rights protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments that the plaintiff seeks to vindicate. It then must identify and evaluate the precise interests put forward by the State as justifications for the burden imposed by its rule. In passing judgment, the Court must not only determine the legitimacy and strength of each of those interests; it also must consider the extent to which those interests make it necessary to burden the plaintiff's rights. Only after weighing all these factors is the reviewing court in a position to decide whether the challenged provision is constitutional.

460 U.S. at 789, 103 S.Ct. at 1570. ⁴

Applying the Anderson test to the Party's challenge to the distribution requirement of Sec. 24.1-159, the balance weighs significantly in favor of Virginia's right to regulate access to its ballot in this limited manner. In terms of pure numbers, 0.5% of the qualified voters, the statute requires only a nominal demonstration of support in order to place a candidate's name on the ballot. This requirement is one of the least burdensome in the nation. See generally Note, Developments in the Law--Elections, 88 Harv.L.Rev. 1111, 1124 n. 11 (1975). The Party argues, however, that the requirement that a political organization submit a petition including the signatures of at least 200 qualified voters from each of Virginia's ten congressional districts results in unconstitutional vote dilution and cannot be justified by any legitimate state interests. While the Supreme Court has recognized that a state may not implement an electoral scheme that debases or dilutes the weight of a citizen's vote, Moore v. Ogilvie, 394 U.S. 814, 818, 89 S.Ct. 1493, 1495, 23 L.Ed.2d 1 (1969), in our view the distribution requirement of Sec. 24.1-159 does not possess such impact and moreover advances important state interests.

In the first place, Virginia law requires that congressional districts be apportioned in such a way as to contain, as nearly as practicable, an equal number of inhabitants. Wilkins v. Davis, 205 Va. 803, 139 S.E.2d 849 (1965). We are thus not faced with a statutory scheme based on unequal voter apportionment such as those which have come under close constitutional scrutiny. See, e.g., Moore v. Ogilvie, 394 U.S. 814, 89 S.Ct. 1493, 23 L.Ed.2d 1 (1969) (overturning Illinois scheme requiring signatures of 200 voters from each of at least 50 counties where evidence showed that 93.4% of voters resided in 49 most populous counties while 6.6% resided in remaining 53 counties); Blomquist v. Thomson, 739 F.2d 525 (10th Cir.1984) (striking down Wyoming requirement that new political party submit signatures of 8,000 voters, the majority of whom did not reside in same county, on grounds that requirement discriminated against residents in more populated counties); Communist Party v. State Board of Elections, 518 F.2d 517 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 423 U.S. 986, 96 S.Ct. 394, 46 L.Ed.2d 303 (1975) (Illinois statute requiring 25,000 voter signatures, not more than 13,000 of which from any one county, held invalid as unconstitutionally diluting voting power of citizens residing in populous counties), Libertarian Party of Nebraska v. Beermann, 598 F.Supp. 57 (D.Neb.1984) (state statute requiring signatures from each county held unconstitutional). Va.Code Sec. 24.1-159, in stark contrast to the enactments considered in the above decisions, operates evenhandedly and does not allow voters from one district to control access to the state's ballot.

The Virginia statute also promotes important state interests. The requirement that a political organization or candidate exhibit a "significant modicum of support" before being granted a place on the state's ballot serves the legitimate state interest of avoiding "confusion, deception, and even frustration of the democratic process at the general election." Jenness v. Fortson, 403 U.S. 431, 442, 91 S.Ct. 1970, 1976, 29 L.Ed.2d 554 (1971). Moreover, the states "have important interests in protecting the integrity of their political processes from frivolous or fraudulent candidacies, in ensuring that their election processes are efficient, in avoiding voter confusion caused by an overcrowded ballot, and in avoiding the expense and burden of run-off elections." Clements v. Fashing, 457 U.S. 957, 965, 102 S.Ct. 2836, 2844, 73 L.Ed.2d 508 (1982). Section 24.1-159, when viewed in full, comports with these state concerns and does not unfairly or unnecessarily burden "the availability of political opportunity." Anderson v. Celebrezze, supra, 460 U.S. at 793, 103 S.Ct. at 1572. As noted, the requirement of a petition signed by 0.5% of eligible voters is a minimal impediment. Moreover, Virginia imposes no disaffiliation requirement on those voters who sign petitions, nor does the state demand that those voters actually vote for Libertarian Party candidates in the general election. The deadline for filing petitions, sixty days before the election, is among the most generous in the nation. See Anderson v. Celebrezze, 460 U.S. 780, 795 n. 20, 103 S.Ct. 1564, 1573 n. 20, 75 L.Ed.2d 547 (1983). The time alloted to procure signatures, eight months in this case, substantially exceeds periods previously held permissible. See Jenness v. Fortson, 403 U.S. at 433, 91 S.Ct. at 1971 (180 days); Storer v. Brown, 415 U.S. at 739-40, 94 S.Ct. at 1283-84 (24 days); American Party of Texas v. White, 415 U.S. 767, 786, 94 S.Ct. 1296, 1308, 39 L.Ed.2d 744 (55 days).

Although not determinative, it is significant that...