The most natural privilege of man, next to the right of acting for himself, is that of combining his exertions with those of his fellow creatures, and of acting in common with them. The right of association therefore appears to me almost as inalienable in its nature as the *267 right of personal liberty. No legislator can attack it without impairing the foundations of society.
No person shall be permitted to vote at a primary of a party unless he is on the last-completed enrollment list of such party in the municipality or voting district....
EXCEPT WHERE PROVIDED OTHERWISE BY STATE PARTY RULES, no person shall be permitted to vote at a primary of a party unless he is on the last-completed enrollment list of such party in the municipality or voting district....
Where state party rules so provide, an elector whose name does not appear on any enrollment list shall be entitled to vote in a primary conducted by such party for nomination for election to the office of governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of the state, treasurer, comptroller, attorney general, senator or representative.
Where the state law has made the primary an integral part of the procedure of choice, or where in fact the primary effectively controls the choice, ... this right of participation is protected just as is the right to vote at the election ...
In their political associations the Americans, of all conditions, minds, and ages, daily acquire a general taste for association and grow accustomed to the use of it. There they meet together in large numbers, they converse, they listen to one another, and they are mutually stimulated to all sorts of undertakings. They afterwards transfer to civil life the notions they have thus acquired and make them subservient to a thousand purposes. Thus it is by the enjoyment of a dangerous freedom that the Americans learn the act of rendering the dangers of freedom less formidable.
[t]he definition of the right of suffrage is very justly regarded as a fundamental article of republican government. It was incumbent on the convention, therefore, to define and establish this right in the Constitution. To have left it open for the occasional regulation of the Congress would have been improper for the reason just mentioned. To have submitted it to the legislative discretion of the States would have been improper for the same reason; and for the additional reason that it would have rendered too dependent on the State governments that branch of the federal government which ought to be dependent on the people alone. To have reduced the different qualifications in the different States to one uniform rule would probably have been as dissatisfactory to some of the States as it would have been difficult to the convention. The provision made by the convention appears, therefore, to be the best that lay within their option. It must be satisfactory to every State, because it is comfortable to the standard already established, or which may be established, by the State itself. It will be safe to the United States because, being fixed by the State constitutions, it is not alterable by the State governments, and it cannot be feared that the people of the States will alter this part of their constitutions in such a manner as to abridge the rights secured to them by the federal Constitution.
*288 Who are to be the electors of the federal representatives? Not the rich, more than the poor; not the learned, more than the ignorant; not the haughty heirs of distinguished names, more than the humble sons of obscure and unpropitious fortune. The electors are to be the great body of the people of the United States. They are to be the same who exercise the right in every State of electing the corresponding branch of the legislature of the State.
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