HKB
v. Allwright,[1180] that a restriction on party membership imposed by a State convention was invalid under the Fifteenth Amendment, where such membership was a prerequisite for voting in the primary.
Failure has attended the few attempts which have been made to strike down other alleged discriminations in election laws or in their administration. Nearly fifty years ago the Court rejected a claim that an act forbidding the registration of a voter until one year after his intent to become a legal voter shall have been recorded was a denial of equal protection.[1181] In Snowden v. Hughes,[1182] it held that an alleged erroneous refusal of a State Primary Canvassing Board to certify a person as a successful candidate in a party primary was not, in the absence of a showing of purposeful discrimination, a denial of a constitutional right which would justify a suit for damages against members of the Board. Three recent attacks on inequalities in the effective voting power of persons residing in different geographical areas were likewise unsuccessful. The Court refused, in Colegrove v. Green,[1183] to interfere to prevent the election of Representatives in Congress by districts in Illinois, because of unequal apportionment. Two years later, in MacDougall v. Green[1184] it held that a State law requiring candidates of a new political party to obtain a minimum number of signatures on their nominating petitions in each of 50 counties did not withhold equal justice from the overwhelming majority of the voters who resided in the 49 most populous counties. Over the dissent of Justices Black and Douglas it affirmed the action of a federal district court in dismissing a complaint challenging the validity of Georgia's county unit election system, under which the votes of residents of the most populous county have on the average but one-tenth the weight of those in other counties.[1185]
PROCEDURE
General Doctrine
The equal protection clause does not exact uniformity of procedure. State legislatures may classify litigation and adopt one type of procedure for one class and a different type for another. The procedure followed in condemnation suits brought by a State need not be the same as in a suit started by a private corporation.[1186] Procedural rules may vary in different geographic subdivisions of the State; the State may be given a larger number of peremptory challenges to jurors in capital cases in cities having more than 100,000 inhabitants than in other areas.[1187] A State may require that disputes on the amount of loss under fire insurance policies be submitted to arbitration.[1188] It may prescribe the evidence which shall be received and the effect which shall be given it; proof of one fact, or of several facts taken collectively, may be made prima facie evidence of another fact, so long as it is not a mere arbitrary mandate and does not discriminate invidiously between different persons in substantially the same situations.[1189] A plaintiff in a stockholder's derivative suit may be required to give security if he does not own a specified amount of stock; the size of his financial interest may reasonably be considered as some measure of his good faith and responsibility in bringing the suit.[1190]
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