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Gray v. Sanders

Supreme Court of the United States · 1963 · Constitutional Law

Constitutional LawEqual ProtectionVoting RightsState ActionPrimary ElectionsEqual Protection ClauseFourteenth Amendmentstatewide election

Facts

Georgia used a county unit system in statewide Democratic primaries under which counties were allotted unit votes and the candidate winning the popular vote in a county received that county's entire unit vote. The voter-plaintiff alleged that this system drastically overvalued votes from small rural counties and undervalued votes from populous counties such as Fulton County. While the suit was pending, Georgia amended the system through a population-bracket allocation of unit votes, but the amended law still allowed the county winner to take the county's full unit vote and still produced substantial disparities in voting strength. After the district court ruled for the plaintiff, the Democratic Committee chose to hold the 1962 primary on a popular-vote basis, but the challenged statute remained in force for future elections.

Issue

Whether Georgia's county unit system for counting votes in a party primary for United States Senator and statewide offices violates the Equal Protection Clause by weighting votes unequally among qualified voters based on the county in which they live. The Court also considered whether the primary involved state action and whether the case was moot.

Rule

In a statewide election, once the class of qualified voters is established, the Equal Protection Clause requires equality of voting power among all participating voters. A State may not, by a vote-counting mechanism, give greater weight to one person's vote than another's because of residence within the State; within a constituency, the constitutional principle is one person, one vote.

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Colorado law requires recognized political parties to hold state-run primaries for governor and secretary of state on dates fixed by statute, with state officials printing ballots, staffing polling places, and certifying results. The Prairie Alliance Party uses a county-points formula in its gubernatorial primary under which the winner of each county receives all of that county's points, even though the point totals heavily favor sparsely populated counties.

If a Denver voter challenges the formula under the Fourteenth Amendment, what is the strongest response to the party's argument that it is a private association not engaged in state action?

Explanation. The majority held that when the State regulates and adopts the primary as part of its election machinery, the party's conduct of that primary is state action. The key is not the party's private identity in the abstract, but the State's collaboration in administering the preliminary election process. Because Colorado law integrates the primary into the public election system, the Fourteenth Amendment applies to the vote-counting method.