502us2$22M 08-19-96 17:40:23 PAGES OPINPGT
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NORMAN v. REED Opinion of the Court
is far broader than necessary to serve the State’s asserted interests. To prevent misrepresentation and electoral confusion, Illinois may, of course, prohibit candidates running for office in one subdivision from adopting the name of a party established in another if they are not in any way affiliated with the party. The State’s interest is particularly strong where, as here, the party and its self-described candidates coexist in the same geographical area. But Illinois could avoid these ills merely by requiring the candidates to get formal permission to use the name from the established party they seek to represent, a simple expedient for fostering an informed electorate without suppressing the growth of small parties. Thus, the State Supreme Court’s inhospitable reading of § 10–5 sweeps broader than necessary to advance electoral order and accordingly violates the First Amendment right of political association. See Anderson, supra, at 793– 794; Williams, supra, at 30–34. For her part, when Reed argues that the county Party, led by R. Eugene Pincham, is “different from” the Party established in the city of Chicago under the leadership of Timothy Evans, she may indeed be suggesting that the city Party failed to authorize the Cook County candidates to use the Party name. But Reed offers no support at all for that assumption, which stands at odds with what few relevant facts the record reveals. The Electoral Board found that Timothy Evans, the Party’s most recent mayoral candidate in the city of Chicago, had specifically authorized petitioners’ use of the Party name in Cook County. While acknowledging that Evans was not the statutory chairman of the Chicago Party, the Board ruled, and Reed does not dispute, that Evans, “as the only candidate of the Chicago HWP,” was “the only person empowered by the Election Code to act in any official capacity for the HWP.” We have no authoritative ruling on Illinois law to the contrary, and Reed advances no legal argument for the insufficiency of Evans’ authorization.
