Libertarian Party of NH v. Gardner , 843 F.3d 20 ( 2016 )

United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 15-2068
LIBERTARIAN PARTY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE,
Plaintiff, Appellant,
v.
WILLIAM M. GARDNER, New Hampshire Secretary of State,
in his official capacity,
Defendant, Appellee.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF NEW HAMPSHIRE
[Hon. Paul J. Barbadoro, U.S. District Judge]
Before
Lynch, Thompson, and Kayatta,
Circuit Judges.
William E. Christie, with whom Shaheen & Gordon, P.A., Gilles
R. Bissonnette, and American Civil Liberties Union of New Hampshire
were on brief, for appellant.
Laura E. B. Lombardi, Senior Assistant Attorney General, New
Hampshire Department of Justice, with whom Stephen G. LaBonte, and
Joseph A. Foster, New Hampshire Attorney General, were on brief,
for appellee.
Mark W. Freel and Locke Lord LLP on brief for Libertarian
Association of Massachusetts, Green-Rainbow Party, United
Independent Party, Maine Green Independent Party, and Moderate
Party of Rhode Island, amici curiae in support of appellant.
Bruce I. Afran, Mark R. Brown, and Oliver B. Hall on brief
for the Center for Competitive Democracy, amicus curiae in support
of appellant.
Gordon J. MacDonald, Holly J. Barcroft, and Nixon Peabody LLP
on brief for the Republican National Committee, amicus curiae in
support of appellee.
December 2, 2016
KAYATTA, Circuit Judge. Like most states, the State of
New Hampshire has long required that political parties seeking to
have their nominees listed on statewide election ballots first
demonstrate a sufficient modicum of support among registered
voters. New Hampshire law deems that a party has made such a
demonstration if, in the most recent prior statewide election, one
of its candidates received at least four percent of the statewide
vote for Governor or United States Senator. N.H. Rev. Stat. Ann.
§ 652:11. Otherwise a party need submit nomination papers signed
by a number of registered voters at least equal to three percent
of the total votes cast in the most recent state general election.
Id. § 655:42(III).
In this lawsuit, the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire
("LPNH") focuses on the time period during which New Hampshire law
allows parties to gather nomination signatures and submit
nomination papers. Prior to 2014, this period ran roughly twenty-
one months from the prior November election to early August of the
pertinent election year.1 In 2014, New Hampshire reduced this time
period to a bit more than seven months (hereinafter "seven months")
by delaying the start date to January 1 of the pertinent election
year. See 2014 N.H. Laws § 29:1 ("HB 1542") (codified at N.H.
1
The end date, which varies each year, is five weeks before
the New Hampshire primary, N.H. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 655:41, which
falls on the second Tuesday in August, id. § 653:8.
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Rev. Stat. Ann. § 655:40-a) (effective July 22, 2014). In the
wake of this shortening of the time period within which it could
gather nomination signatures, LPNH promptly filed this lawsuit
claiming that the new restriction violated its rights under the
First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution.
LPNH now appeals the district court's summary judgment decision to
the contrary. For the following reasons, we affirm.
I. Background
LPNH qualified for the ballot in New Hampshire as a
"political party" under state law in 1992, 1994, and 1996, based
on the electoral performance of its gubernatorial candidates in
prior elections. In 2000, LPNH managed to gather enough qualifying
signatures to secure a place on the statewide ballot for all of
its nominees. But no LPNH statewide candidate secured as much as
four percent of the vote, and LPNH offers no evidence that any of
its local candidates fared better. In 2002, 2004, 2006, 2008, and
2010, LPNH did not gain party access to the statewide ballot. LPNH
offers no evidence suggesting that New Hampshire law posed any
unreasonable impediment to qualifying during those years.
Apparently, some of LPNH's candidates, including its presidential
candidate in 2004, also sought access through the individual
nomination process, whereby an individual who gathers just 3,000
signatures is listed on the statewide ballot.
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In 2012, LPNH itself again reached the New Hampshire
general ballot via the nomination papers route. The record of
that successful effort reveals that the gathering of signatures on
nomination petitions is largely a paid, professional undertaking.
LPNH tells us (and defendants do not dispute) that "LPNH, like
other minor political parties seeking ballot access or advocacy
groups seeking to certify a ballot question, rel[ies] on outside
professional petitioners to collect signatures." LPNH retained
one local paid "petitioner" to gather signatures at a fee of $1
per signature. LPNH also apparently paid a national outfit $2 per
signature to gather roughly 13,100 signatures during August and
September of 2011 plus roughly 1,700 signatures on a single day in
July 2012.2 It appears that unpaid volunteers also gathered
roughly 3,000 to 4,000 additional signatures. LPNH ultimately
spent approximately $40,000 to gather 19,000 signatures in 2012,
overshooting the mark (of roughly 14,000 qualifying signatures)
because not all signatures submitted were likely to be certified.
Getting nominating signatures in 2012 turned out to be
easier than getting votes. LPNH's gubernatorial nominee received
2.8% of the vote, its presidential nominee received 1.2%, and, in
a state with hundreds of state legislative races, LPNH recruited
2 LPNH offers no clarity on exactly what it paid even though
it presumably knows. We nevertheless will rely for purposes of
this opinion on the testimony of LPNH chairperson Richard Tomasso.
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only ten other candidates, just one of whom reached ten percent of
the vote. LPNH apparently made no effort to get on the statewide
ballot in 2014.
Confronted with the shortened signature-gathering window
in 2016, LPNH decided to "put all party-petitioning efforts--
including fundraising for those efforts--on hold until this
litigation ends, as the outcome of this litigation would dictate
whether [LPNH] would even go through the party-petitioning process
during the 2016 general election." LPNH estimates that compliance
with the new law would increase the cost of gathering sufficient
signatures, because paid petitioners generally charge more during
an election year. The current chairperson of LPNH testified that
an election year paid-petition drive "would probably be a $50,000
effort," that is to say, about $10,000 more than LPNH spent in
2012.
LPNH alleges that the shortened window for gathering
signatures "facially" violates the Fourteenth Amendment's
guarantee of equal protection and the freedom of association
secured by the First Amendment. After discovery, the parties
agreed that the case could be decided on cross motions for summary
judgment. After holding a hearing to gather more evidence on
LPNH's prior efforts to secure ballot access, the district court
agreed that there were no genuine disputes of material fact.
Neither party challenges this conclusion on appeal. Rather, they
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limit their arguments to contesting whether the district court
made an error of law in concluding that the undisputed facts did
not establish a violation of LPNH's asserted constitutional rights
because HB 1542 "imposes only a reasonable burden on ballot access
that is outweighed by the State's interest in avoiding ballot
clutter." Libertarian Party of N.H. v. Gardner ("Gardner"), 126
F. Supp. 3d 194, 210 (D.N.H. 2015). The parties agree that our
review of this conclusion should be de novo.
II. Analysis
A. Mootness?
Even if we were to decide that signatures gathered prior
to January 1, 2016, must be counted by the state, LPNH offers no
evidence that it gathered any such signatures or, for that matter,
that it gathered any material number of signatures this election
cycle at all. And the 2016 election itself is now history. We
must therefore ask whether this case is moot. See Barr v. Galvin,
626 F.3d 99, 104 (1st Cir. 2010).
We conclude that it is not. Statewide elections will
regularly occur after this year. LPNH has a demonstrated (albeit
episodic) record of seeking statewide ballot access in New
Hampshire and elsewhere. In view of that record, we give the
"benefit of the doubt" to LPNH's continuing practical interest in
the resolution of its legal claim. Id. at 106. Moreover, a new
suit to allow signature gathering in the pre-election years of
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2017 and 2019 would need to start pretty much now anyhow to avoid
the same type of arguable mootness. We thus conclude that there
exists a sufficient probability that LPNH's challenge to New
Hampshire's existing ballot-access regime is likely to reoccur,
and is not now unripe. Jurisdiction therefore lies. See FEC v.
Wis. Right To Life, Inc., 551 U.S. 449, 462 (2007) (noting that
federal courts may hear otherwise moot controversies that are
uniquely capable of repetition yet will often evade review); Barr,
626 F.3d at 106 ("[A]lthough the [capable of repetition yet evading
review] exception has been applied frequently in election-related
cases . . . not every election case fits within its four
corners.").
B. Merits
1.
As we have described, LPNH objects to the effect of
HB 1542 "not in the context of an actual election, but in a facial
challenge." Wash. State Grange v. Wash. State Republican Party,
552 U.S. 442, 449 (2008). Facial challenges to state laws are
difficult to mount. See id. at 449–51. The Supreme Court has
articulated two formulations of the standard for assessing facial
challenges to statutes. See United States v. Stevens, 559 U.S.
460, 472 (2010) ("Which standard applies in a typical case is a
matter of dispute that we need not and do not address . . . .");
see also Hightower v. City of Boston, 693 F.3d 61, 77 n.13 (1st
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Cir. 2012) (discussing the dual extant standards without
"resolv[ing] the issue"). In United States v. Salerno, 481 U.S.
739 (1987), the Court held that a facial challenge can only succeed
where the plaintiff "establishes that no set of circumstances
exists under which the Act would be valid." Id. at 745. In
Washington State Grange, a facial challenge to a state ballot-
access provision, "the Court noted that 'some Members of the Court
have criticized the Salerno formulation,' but that 'all agree that
a facial challenge must fail where the statute has a "plainly
legitimate sweep."'" Hightower, 693 F.3d at 77 n.13 (quoting Wash.
State Grange, 552 U.S. at 449). We rely on this latter formulation
of the standard.
The difficulty in mounting a facial challenge to a state
law arises most notably in challenges to laws that, by their terms,
leave room for discretion in their application, meaning a state
official could "accord the law a limiting construction to avoid
constitutional questions." Wash. State Grange, 552 U.S. at 450.
The state law at issue here, however, has no such play in the
joints. It fixes its various requirements objectively and
specifically, with the largely immaterial exception of the precise
day in early August when papers must be submitted. It is also
one-size-fits-all, for all comers. In short, the components of
the burden it imposes are defined by its facial terms, not by any
anticipated exercise of discretion in its application.
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The facial nature of LPNH's challenge nevertheless still
calls for some skepticism because it comes without the benefit of
an actual demonstration of a failed effort to get on the ballot
under the requirement being challenged. We are mindful that
"[c]laims of facial invalidity often rest on speculation," id.,and we are reluctant to engage in the "premature interpretation of
statutes on the basis of factually barebones records," id. (quoting
Sabri v. United States, 541 U.S. 600, 609 (2004)).
2.
The Supreme Court first considered a constitutional
challenge to state-enacted ballot-access regulations in Williams
v. Rhodes, 393 U.S. 23 (1968). Such challenges implicate "two
different, although overlapping, kinds of rights--the right of
individuals to associate for the advancement of political beliefs,
and the right of qualified voters, regardless of their political
persuasion, to cast their votes effectively," thereby triggering
scrutiny under both the First and Fourteenth Amendments. Id. at
30. The Ohio ballot-access regulations challenged in Williams
required a new party seeking to place its candidates on the
statewide ballot to file, by the February preceding the November
election, nominating petitions signed by a number of voters equal
to at least fifteen percent of the total vote cast in the most
recent gubernatorial election. The regulations further required
that the party establish a party organization, and conduct
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primaries or national conventions. All in all, the Court found
that the regulations "tend[ed] to give [the Republicans and
Democrats] a complete monopoly," id. at 32, closing off the ballot
to a party that actually gathered 450,000 nominating signatures.
Id. at 26. Noting that, at that time, "[f]orty-two states
require[d] third parties to obtain the signatures of only 1% or
less of the electorate" with no apparent problems, id. at 33 n.9,
the Supreme Court rejected Ohio's stated justifications.
Three years later, the Court considered a similar
challenge to Georgia's ballot-access laws. See Jenness v. Fortson,
403 U.S. 431 (1971). In brief, Georgia granted a party's nominees
automatic access to the ballot only if a candidate of the party
"received 20% or more of the vote at the most recent gubernatorial
or presidential election." Id. at 433. Otherwise, a candidate
for an office needed to gather within 180 days signatures of five
percent of the total number of voters eligible to vote in the prior
election for that office, all of whom were eligible to sign such
nominating petitions. Id. Pointing to what it regarded as "surely
an important state interest in requiring some preliminary showing
of a significant modicum of support before printing the name of a
political organization's candidate on the ballot," id. at 442, the
Court found in Georgia's regime "nothing that abridges the rights
of free speech and association secured by the First and Fourteenth
Amendments," id. at 440. It also concluded that the plaintiffs'
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"claim under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment fares no better." Id.Another three years later, the Court considered
California's claim that its five-percent requirement was similarly
valid. Storer v. Brown, 415 U.S. 724 (1974). In California,
though, the party seeking ballot access could gather signatures
only from persons who did not vote in a primary conducted by the
major parties. As the Court observed in remanding the case for
further factfinding, one would need to gather more than five
percent of this restricted subset of eligible voters in order to
equal five percent of the entire set of voters in the previous
election. Id. at 739; see also Am. Party of Tex. v. White, 415
U.S. 767, 784 (1974) (finding that requiring signatures totaling
one percent of the vote cast in the previous gubernatorial election
to be gathered from only those who did not vote in a party primary
"falls within the outer boundaries of support the State may
require").
On the two occasions when the Supreme Court has actually
struck down five-percent requirements where the pool of those who
could sign was not substantially restricted, it has done so not
because it determined a five-percent requirement by its nature
imposed too significant a burden, but because the state itself
recognized it could achieve its goals without so high a signature
requirement. In Illinois State Board of Elections v. Socialist
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Workers Party, 440 U.S. 173 (1979), for example, the Court struck
down an Illinois signature requirement for ballot access in
political subdivision elections that exceeded the signature
requirements for ballot access in statewide elections. See id. at
186–87. It did the same in Norman v. Reed, 502 U.S. 279 (1992),
explaining that Illinois's requirement had "unconstitutional
breadth" because "a prerequisite to establishing a new political
party in . . . multidistrict subdivisions [was] some multiple of
the number of signatures required of new statewide parties." Id.
at 293.
Neither the Supreme Court nor any circuit court has
struck down a statewide ballot-access regime on the grounds that
a signature requirement of five percent (or less) is too much, or
that six months (or more) is too little time within which to gather
the signatures from a pool of substantially all voters. See, e.g.,
Rainbow Coal. of Okla. v. Okla. State Election Bd., 844 F.2d 740,
741–42, 747 (10th Cir. 1988) (finding a law requiring 45,497
signatures, or five percent of the number of voters in the previous
election, in one year a "relatively high signature requirement"
but not impermissible); Libertarian Party of Fla. v. Florida, 710
F.2d 790, 794 (11th Cir. 1983) (finding a law requiring 144,492
signatures, or three percent of the state's registered voters, in
188 days "not impermissibly burdensome").
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The New Hampshire combination of percentage and
timeframe, while likely more demanding than the laws in many
states, is markedly less burdensome than the regime at issue in
Jenness. Ballot access under the actual New Hampshire requirement
of three percent in seven months required approximately 2,114 valid
signatures per month. By contrast, if applied to New Hampshire,
the Georgia requirements of five percent in 180 days approved in
Jenness would have required LPNH to gather well more than 4,111
valid signatures per month to gain ballot access in 2016.3
Moreover, the nominating petition in Georgia secured a place on
the ballot only for the nominated candidate, not for a party's
whole slate. Jenness, 403 U.S. at 432.
LPNH argues that Jenness blessed only Georgia's five-
percent requirement, not its 180-day window. It is true that the
specific challenge in Jenness focused on the five-percent
requirement. But it is also true that in distinguishing Williams,
Jenness contrasted "the totality of the Ohio restrictive laws taken
as a whole," id. at 437 (quoting Williams, 393 U.S. at 34) with
Georgia's entire "statutory scheme," id. at 438. Similarly, and
as we have already noted, the differing results in Jenness and
3
The number of signatures required in New Hampshire under
the Georgia five-percent requirement would almost certainly be
much larger than 4,111 per month because Georgia applied its five-
percent requirement to the number of eligible voters, see Jenness,
403 U.S. at 433, rather than (as in New Hampshire) to the smaller
number of persons who actually voted.
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Storer hinged precisely on consideration of the manner in which
the five-percent requirement need be satisfied. Notably, Jenness
expressly described Georgia as allowing a nominee to "seek, over
a six months' period, the signatures of 5% of the eligible
electorate . . . ." Id.; see also Developments in the Law --
Elections, 88 Harv. L. Rev. 1121, 1143 (1975) (Jenness
"specifically endorsed a comprehensive approach to evaluating the
constitutionality of a state's ballot access restrictions.").
It therefore follows that LPNH's challenge to New
Hampshire's three-percent-within-seven-months requirement must
fail unless either Jenness's approval of a more broadly applicable
five-percent-within-180-days requirement is no longer good law, or
this case is distinguishable on other grounds. LPNH does not argue
that Jenness is no longer good law. Rather, it argues that, for
a variety of reasons, this case presents materially distinguishing
facts. We consider these reasons in turn.
First, LPNH correctly notes that, in sustaining
Georgia's five-percent-within-180-days requirement, the Court in
Jenness observed that Georgia's rules did not otherwise impose any
"suffocating restrictions whatever upon the free circulation of
nominating petitions." 403 U.S. at 438. The Court similarly noted
that "Georgia has imposed no arbitrary restrictions whatever upon
the eligibility of any registered voter to sign as many nominating
petitions as he wishes." Id. at 442. New Hampshire voters, on
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the other hand, may sign only one petition per election cycle.
This restriction, LPNH reasons, materially distinguishes the New
Hampshire ballot-access regime from the Georgia regime sustained
in Jenness. LPNH, though, offers no evidence of losing even a
single signature opportunity due to that restriction, or that any
other party even circulated petitions for party access or will be
doing so. Moreover, even allowing for such a possibility, the
incremental impact on LPNH's efforts would seem to be far less
than the burden of gathering signatures from as large a percentage
of the electorate as was sustained in Jenness.4
LPNH also argues that the New Hampshire regulations do
not really allow seven (or even six) months as a practical matter
because the time period includes the winter months when, LPNH says,
it is much more difficult to find people in groups outside. Of
course, hundreds of thousands of New Hampshire citizens streamed
in and out of polling stations in the presidential primaries held
last February. And even if we were to view seven New Hampshire
months as the equivalent of five Georgia months, the cumulative
burden in New Hampshire would still be less than that sustained in
Jenness because of New Hampshire's low percentage requirement.
4 Nor does New Hampshire's law impose any of the possibly
"suffocating restrictions," Jenness, 403 U.S. at 438, that led to
the remand in Storer. See Storer, 415 U.S. at 740. Any registered
voter may sign a petition. Notarization is not required.
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The record LPNH has compiled in this case also makes
clear that the marginal impact of the difference between five,
six, or seven months is quite small. With $50,000 in hand, a party
can obtain 20,000 signatures within two or three months (or even
seven days if we use LPNH's July 2012 experience as a gauge). Or,
with the equivalent of twenty fulltime volunteers, a party can
apparently gather enough signatures in a single month.5 Even
reducing these experience-based estimates by half, one is still
left to conclude that, once one has more than several
months--and certainly five to seven months--the driving variables
in determining success in gathering 20,000 signatures are money
and volunteers, not time within which to gather signatures. The
difference between seven months and more than seven months is
therefore largely immaterial as long as the time for raising money
and recruiting volunteers is not reduced.
Reframing the issue, LPNH next attempts to pitch at least
a portion of its challenge as a challenge only to the January 1,
year-of-election start date mandated by HB 1542. The logic here
seems to be that even if the combined burden of signature amount
and gathering time is not impermissible in the abstract, a
limitation on when the gathering time must occur may be invalid.
We accept the premise that the precise point on the calendar during
5
Based on LPNH's experience in 2000, it appears that one
fulltime volunteer can gather 1,000 signatures in a month.
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which the signature-gathering window may remain open can pose a
problem independent of the size of the window. For example, early
dates may precede the events that give rise to third-party support,
as in the presidential elections of 1892, 1912, 1924, and 1968,
see generally Alexander Bickel, Reform and Continuity, The
Electoral College, The Convention, and the Party System 87-88
(1968), as well as 1980, see Anderson v. Celebrezze, 460 U.S. 780,
790 (1983). In Anderson, the Supreme Court set aside an eight-
month qualifying date requirement that ended in March of the
pertinent election year as too early for just this reason. See
id. at 791–92.
LPNH makes no claim that New Hampshire requires it to
submit its nominating papers too soon. To the contrary, it argues
that New Hampshire requires third parties to wait too long before
they can gather signatures. The case for challenging a start date
requirement as too late cuts against some of the reasons for
striking down early end-date requirements. Moving ballot-access
efforts closer to an election encourages third parties to first
work within one of the two more established parties, advancing
what the Supreme Court has called "the State's interest in
preserving party harmony." Id. at 805 (citing Bickel, supra, at
87-88). Similarly, as New Hampshire notes, signatures gathered
nearer the end date are more likely to represent the views of the
signers as of the end date than those signed well in advance. That
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being said, New Hampshire's January 1 start date is a requirement
not imposed by the Georgia regime at issue in Jenness, so we need
consider whether it renders the New Hampshire ballot-access regime
more burdensome than the Georgia regime the Supreme Court there
approved.
LPNH contends that the January 1 start date burdens a
party seeking ballot access by requiring that it spend time on
petitioning during the election year, rather than before the
election year, thereby reducing the time available for
"electioneering" when it is most effective. LPNH, however,
simultaneously stresses that the gathering of nomination
signatures is principally performed by paid professionals who are
not otherwise engaged in the actual campaigns. The start date, in
turn, does not apply to fundraising activities, hence LPNH can
raise the funds to pay professional signature gatherers any time
it wants.
LPNH did use some volunteer time in 2012 to gather
signatures. That time seems to equal only two and one-half months
of volunteer time, more or less. We have no doubt that the petition
process itself takes also some of the time of campaign officials
even if they do not themselves gather signatures. The record,
however, provides no quantification suggesting that any such
effort materially detracts from "electioneering," especially
keeping in mind that there is no claim that the candidates' efforts
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are impeded. All in all, this is small beer. According to LPNH's
own estimates, the entire "lost" election year effort could be
regained for $5,000 paid to professional signature gatherers. And
the effort is not lost, but simply time-shifted so that its value
is arguably reduced but certainly not eliminated.
Somewhat inconsistently, LPNH argues that the January 1
start date sidelines its attempts to solidify support in years
when no election occurs by forcing it to sit idly by instead of
strengthening its infrastructure by collecting signatures during
those years. This argument relies on the false premise that if a
political organization is not actively soliciting signatures for
nomination papers, there is nothing it can do to attract supporters
and strengthen its organizational apparatus. To the contrary, as
the district court observed, "[e]ven with the January 1 start date
in place, LPNH remains free to plan its election-year petition
drive[,] . . . recruit volunteers[,] . . . [and] raise funds for
the drive during the off year that it can then spend on paid
petitioning during the election year." Gardner, 126 F. Supp. 3d
at 204–05.
LPNH also claims that the January 1 start date deprives
it of the chance to gather signatures at city off-year elections
in November, fairs in the fall, and other such similar outside
events before the cold New England winter begins. As we noted
above, with New Hampshire voters turning out in droves for party
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primaries in February, we doubt New Hampshire citizens hibernate
as much as LPNH implies. In any event, New Hampshire traditionally
holds town meetings in the spring, followed promptly by farmers'
markets, parades, and ball games in the spring and summer months.
In the words of a former LPNH gubernatorial candidate, spring gun
shows are fruitful sources of signatures, and July 4th provides
each year "the political mecca of parades." LPNH itself gathered
1,700 signatures on a single day in July of 2012. All in all, we
reject as greatly overstated LPNH's contention that the weather
and calendar render the seven-month, January-to-August timeframe
so unsuitable for signature gathering that we should regard it as
more constraining than the 180-day window sustained in Jenness.
Relatedly, LPNH contends that the start date forces it
to "stand still" in the year prior to the year of the election.
If this is simply another way of saying that it has to hold off on
signature gathering until after January 1, we have just addressed
that argument. If, instead, LPNH is saying that the new start
date somehow restricts it from other campaign undertakings prior
to January 1, it seems instead to do just the opposite. The new
start date eliminates signature gathering prior to January 1,
thereby increasing resources available for other activities during
that time. Either way, this argument adds nothing.
LPNH next argues that candidates will not be confident
that they will make the ballot if the late start date prevents
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LPNH from collecting all the signatures it needs by June 30 of the
election year. There is no evidence, though, that LPNH has ever
placed any premium on concluding before June 30. The major
parties' nominees for governor and state senate are not even
selected until September. And there is no reason that the
professional signature gatherers cannot conduct all their work
well before June 30 if LPNH wants. Again, the controlling factor
would seem to be money, not time.
But, says LPNH, the paid gatherers themselves cost more
during an election year. The evidence of this is skimpy, to say
the least, consisting solely of a back of the envelope guess of a
$10,000 delta by an LPNH official. This is too little in both
foundation and magnitude upon which to rest a facial challenge to
New Hampshire's law.
LPNH argues, finally, that the January 1 start date
delays any effort to determine what it calls the "verification
rate," meaning the percentage of signatures that are verified as
accurate. This information apparently helps estimate how many new
signatures need be gathered. LPNH makes no attempt to spell out
what this actually means, or whether the resulting cost (if any)
is already included in its $10,000 estimate.
Collectively, these arguments that the change in start
date by itself imposes a substantial burden fail to convince us
that New Hampshire's ballot-access regime is as burdensome as--
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much less more burdensome than--the Georgia regime upheld in
Jenness. To the extent they represent any burden for a political
party that has a sufficient modicum of support to mount statewide
campaigns that contribute to the voters' understanding and
meaningful options, the burden is minimal. With social media and
other modern technology, finding and connecting with supporters
can happen with greater expediency than ever before. Contacting
many supporters to contribute to fundraising efforts is easier
today than it has ever been. And, perhaps more importantly,
$50,000 just isn't what it once was, especially in politics. In
a state in which twenty-four individual candidates spent an average
of over $57,000 each to mount successful local campaigns for state
senate in 2010, see Election Overview: New Hampshire 2010, Nat'l
Inst. on Money in State Politics, http://www.followthemoney.org/
election-overview?s=NH&y=2010 (last updated June 13, 2016), it
would be strange to say that a viable statewide political party
cannot be expected to shoulder a $50,000 burden for statewide
ballot access for its nominees.
3.
Unable to mount a persuasive case that the burden New
Hampshire imposes on third parties seeking statewide ballot access
for their nominees even equals, much less exceeds, the burdens
imposed by the Georgia regime sustained in Jenness, LPNH turns its
attention to the other side of the equation. LPNH correctly notes
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that the burdens in Jenness were justified by Georgia's effectively
asserted interest in demanding that a party demonstrate a modicum
of support before receiving the right to have its nominees listed
on the ballot. In this case, by contrast, New Hampshire has not,
LPNH says, effectively asserted such a justification. Rather, in
this case LPNH says that any reliance on the state's asserted
interest in ensuring a baseline level of support among ballot-
eligible parties is only a "new post-hoc justification" concocted
mid-way through this litigation and a smokescreen for the
legislature's real concerns in enacting the amendment. LPNH points
to two New Hampshire legislative subcommittee reports bearing on
HB 1542, both of which identify the facilitation of nomination-
paper certification as the goal advanced by the amendment, and
neither of which mentions an interest in protecting the integrity
of elections by combating ballot overcrowding. Indeed, New
Hampshire defended the new January 1 start date solely on the basis
of its certification justification at an earlier stage in this
litigation, not elaborating on the interest in limiting ballot
access until after discovery had commenced.
Based on this evidence, LPNH urges us to rule that New
Hampshire's stated interest is an illegitimate post hoc
justification that ought not be credited. LPNH argues that,
applying the sliding-scale test developed in Anderson, "the
precise interests put forward by the State as justifications for
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the burden imposed by its rule" pale in comparison to "the
character and magnitude of the asserted injury to the rights
protected by the First and Fourth Amendments that the plaintiff
seeks to vindicate." 460 U.S. at 789.
Precedent, including Anderson, provides no direct
guidance on whether we can rely on belated statements of interest
first voiced in the course of litigation challenging a statute.
LPNH and its amici urge us to adopt by analogy the approach used
in equal protection cases, where a proffered justification cannot
withstand a heightened degree of scrutiny if that justification is
"hypothesized or invented post hoc in response to litigation."
United States v. Virginia, 518 U.S. 515, 533 (1996). They observe
that some courts applying Anderson have compared the middle range
of its sliding scale to "intermediate scrutiny," see Guare v.
State, 117 A.3d 731, 740 (N.H. 2015), and therefore urge us to
ignore the state's asserted interest in ensuring a minimal level
of support for parties appearing on the ballot.
The problem for LPNH is that the burden here caused
solely by the start date itself (as opposed to the three-percent-
within-seven-months requirement), for the reasons already stated,
is minimal, placing it at the easier-to-justify end of Anderson's
sliding scale. Applying LPNH's chosen analogy, we would
accordingly find ourselves at the "rational basis" end of any equal
protection analysis. And, at that end, we can rely on statements
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of the state's interest first identified in litigation briefs.
Barr, 626 F.3d at 110 (finding that if the law imposes only a
"modest" or "reasonable" burden, "there need be only a rational
basis undergirding the regulation in order for it to pass
constitutional muster"); cf. Dudum v. Arntz, 640 F.3d 1098, 1116
n.28 (9th Cir. 2011) (expressing doubt that "the normal ability of
litigants to advance arguments justifying their out-of-court
behavior is suspended in election challenges where, as here, the
burden imposed on voting is minimal at best").6
4.
The foregoing leaves LPNH with one escape gambit:
identify as a burden the cumulative weight of the ballot-access
regime as shortened by HB 1542, characterize that cumulative burden
as falling further along the Anderson sliding scale, and then weigh
it against only the state interest identified by the legislature
6
We therefore need not decide whether we agree with the
district court that post hoc justifications may be considered
whenever Anderson balancing applies. See Gardner, 126 F. Supp. 3d
at 209. We do note, though, that in Crawford v. Marion County
Election Board, 553 U.S. 181 (2008), six Justices--three using
Anderson's "balancing approach," id. at 190 (plurality opinion),
to find that the law in question imposed a "limited burden," id.
at 202 (quoting Burdick v. Takushi, 504 U.S. 428, 439 (1992)), and
three relying on a "two-track approach," id. at 205 (Scalia, J.,
concurring in the judgment), to find the law's burden "minimal,"
id. at 209--declined to consider the distinct but related argument
made by challengers to Indiana's voter identification law "that
the statute was actually motivated by partisan concerns" and not
the concerns advanced by the state in litigation, id. at 191
(plurality opinion).
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in passing HB 1542. We reject this approach as illogical. It
mismatches the cumulative burden of the entire ballot-access
regime with only the justification initially cited by the New
Hampshire legislature for altering the start date (and thus the
duration of petition gathering). We see no reason to require a
state legislature to restate its facially obvious reasons for
having a ballot-access law each time it enacts an amendment
tweaking that law. Similarly, if the current regime would have
withstood challenge had it been enacted now as a whole, we can see
no reason why it should fall if developed over time by amendment.
These ballot-access cases, unlike most voting-access
cases, pose an identity between burden and purpose. The obvious
purpose of the regime, in toto, is precisely to create the burden
itself, which in turn has the effect, at the least, of limiting
voters' selection to those who can make "some preliminary showing
of a significant modicum of support before printing the name of a
political organization's candidate on the ballot . . . ." Jenness,
403 U.S. at 442; see also, e.g., Libertarian Party of Me. v.
Diamond, 992 F.2d 365, 371 (1st Cir. 1993) (endorsing state
interest in "avoiding overloaded ballots and frivolous
candidacies, which diminish victory margins, contribute to the
cost of conducting elections, confuse and frustrate voters,
increase the need for burdensome runoffs, and may ultimately
discourage voter participation in the electoral process"). In the
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words of the Supreme Court, this is "an important state interest."
Jenness, 403 U.S. at 442.
Of course, we are not so naïve as to reject the
possibility that a state legislature dominated by the two major
parties may well wish to overshoot the mark, closing the door to
all competitors. Our ultimate decision must therefore depend in
large part on what we deem to be an appropriate "modicum of
support." Do we mean, for example, that the party's nominees have
enough support to make winning plausible? Or is it enough that
the party's presence in the campaign will generate enough interest
and support to help frame issues and introduce new ideas, affect
the positioning of other candidates, and signal growing
dissatisfaction with the dominant parties? In Anderson, the
Supreme Court suggested that the hard-to-quantify spillover
benefits of a third-party candidacy to the "diversity and
competition in the marketplace of ideas," implicated "the primary
values protected by the First Amendment." 460 U.S. at 794.
In this respect, it is fair to read in Anderson a greater
appreciation for the benefits of third-party participation than is
apparent on the face of the opinion in Jenness. It would be quite
a stretch, though, for a circuit court to leverage such a change
in nuance into a license to stray from a clear ruling sustaining
as constitutional a burden demonstrably greater than that imposed
by New Hampshire. See Sarzen v. Gaughan, 489 F.2d 1076, 1082 (1st
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Cir. 1973) ("When a . . . federal court has spoken, stability and
stare decisis require that litigants and other courts take its
pronouncement at face value until formally altered."); cf. Eulitt
ex rel. Eulitt v. Me. Dep't of Educ., 386 F.3d 344, 349 (1st Cir.
2004) (citing Sarzen, 489 F.2d at 1082) (noting that until a higher
court revokes its binding precedent, a lower court "is hard put to
ignore that precedent unless it has unmistakably been cast into
disrepute by supervening authority"). And even were we to consider
such an ambitious frolic, the record in this case provides little
fuel for much of a journey. Neither LPNH nor its amici explain
how easy or hard it is to gather $50,000 or a few dozen volunteers
in today's world of social media. Are there examples of parties
or candidates that cannot raise $50,000 statewide, yet can still
mount viable campaigns? Or do the costs of staff and advertising
and the thresholds set by debate organizers themselves require
levels of support greater than that required by New Hampshire?
Have any parties barely managed to crawl over access thresholds,
yet ended up playing a substantial role other than as a spoiler?
Or does an analysis of election results in New Hampshire show that
it is easier to get on the ballot than it is to garner substantial
support in the form of actual votes? If a truly viable third party
emerges, would it not harm that party to have too low a threshold,
resulting in many extra parties with no chance, rather than a
single third party less easily lost in the clutter? And what
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effect would lower thresholds have on laws providing public finance
for campaigns? Anyone gauging the dividing line between a properly
qualifying threshold and a barrier to meaningful competition would
presumably want to consider these and other questions. The absence
of information along these lines restricts the scope and quality
of the judicial judgments required in cases such as this. As the
litigant with the burden of proof, see, e.g., Harley-Davidson
Credit Corp. v. Galvin, 807 F.3d 407, 411 (1st Cir. 2015), LPNH
may suffer from that lack of detail in the record.
III. Conclusion
With a cumulative burden well less than that found
acceptable in controlling precedent, and with no other attributes
that themselves pose significant barriers to access, New
Hampshire's regulations stand as an admittedly robust but
nevertheless constitutional exercise of the state's "'broad power
to prescribe the "Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections
for Senators and Representatives," which power is matched by state
control over the election process for state offices.'" Wash. State
Grange, 552 U.S. at 451 (quoting Art. I, § 4, cl. 1; Clingman v.
Beaver, 544 U.S. 581, 586 (2005)). We affirm the judgment of the
district court granting New Hampshire's motion for summary
judgment in this facial challenge to part of the state's ballot-
access framework.
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