This action was brought before a three-judge court convened in the Northern District of Illinois under 28 U.S.C. § 2281 and § 2284, 28 U.S.C.A. § 2281, 2284. The object of the action is an injunction against the enforcement of a provision which, in 1935, was added to a statute of Illinois and which requires that a petition to form and to nominate candidates for a new political party be signed by at least 25,000 qualified voters, 'Provided, that included in the aggregate total of twenty-five thousand (25,000) signatures are the signatures of two hundred (200) qualified voters from each of at least fifty (50) counties within the State.' Ill.Rev.Stat. c. 46, § 10-2(1947). Appellants are the 'Progressive Party,' its nominees for United States Senator, Presidential Electors, and State offices, and several Illinois voters. Appellees are the Governor, the Auditor of Public Accounts, and the Secretary of State of Illinois, members of the Boards of Election Commissioners of various cities, and the County Clerks of various counties. The District Court found want of jurisdiction and denied the injunction 80 F.Supp. 725. Appellants invoke the jurisdiction of this Court under 28 U.S.C. § 1253, 28 U.S.C.A. § 1253.
The action arises from the finding of the State Officers Electoral Board that appellants had not obtained the requisite number of signatures from the requisite number of counties and its consequent ruling that their nominating petition was 'not sufficient in law to entitle the said candidates' names to appear on the ballot.' The appellants' claim to equitable relief against this ruling is based upon the peculiar distribution of population among Illinois' 102 counties. They allege that 52% of the State's registered voters are residents of Cook County alone, 87% are residents of the 49 most populous counties, and only 13% reside in the 5o least populous counties. Under these circumstances, they say, the Illinois statute is so discriminatory in its application as to amount to a denial of the due-process, equal-protection, and privileges-and-immunities clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment, as well as Article I, §§ 2 and 4, Article II, § 1, and the Seventeenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States.
It is clear that the requirement of 200 signatures from at least 50 counties gives to the voters of the less populous counties of Illinois the power completely to block the nomination of candidates whose support is confined to geographically limited areas. But the State is entitled to deem this power not disproportionate: of 25,000 signatures required, only 9,800, or 39%, need be distributed; the remaining 61% may be obtained from a single county. And Cook County, the largest, contains not more than 52% of the State's voters. It is allowable State policy to require that candidates for state-wide office should have support not limited to a concentrated locality. This is not a unique policy. See New York Laws 1896, c. 909, § 57, now N.Y.Elec.Law § 137(4); 113 Laws of Ohio 349, Gen.Code, § 4785-91 (1929), now Ohio Code Ann. (Cum.Supp.1947) § 4785-91; Mass.Acts 1943, c. 334, § 2, now Mass.Ann.Laws c. 53, § 6 (1945). To assume that political power is a function exclusively of numbers is to disregard the practicalities of government. Thus, the Constitution protects the interests of the smaller against the greater by giving in the Senate entirely unequal representation to populations. It would be strange indeed, and doctrinaire, for this Court, applying such broad constitutional concepts as due process and equal protection of the laws, to deny a State the power to assure a proper diffusion of political initiative as between its thinly populated counties and those having concentrated masses, in view of the fact that the latter have practical opportunities for exerting their political weight at the polls not available to the former. The Constitution a practical instrument of government-makes no such demands on the States. Colegrove v. Green, 328 U.S. 549, 66 S.Ct. 1198, 90 L.Ed. 1432, and Colegrove v. Barrett, 330 U.S. 804, 67 S.Ct. 973, 91 L.Ed. 1262.
On the record before us, we need not pass upon purely local questions, also urged by appellants, having no federal constitutional aspect.
Judgment affirmed.
Mr. Justice RUTLEDGE.