The Washington State law that requires the name and addresses (important to add that part) of those who petition to put a referendum measure on the ballot be supplied was upheld 8-1 today. In a rather thin opinion of barely thirteen pages, and over fifty pages of concurring/dissenting opinions, the Supreme Court narrowly decided the question:
The issue at this stage of the case is not whether disclosure of this particular petition would violate the First Amendment, but whether disclosure of referendum petitions in general would do so.
In a bit of irony, the law was in part defended as an anti-fraud device (!), voting fraud cases cited.* The Court (via Roberts) left open an "as applied" challenge geared to specific referendum measures that might cause harm, but only Justices Alito (concurring) and Thomas (dissent) really seemed open to the idea. Five justices (including Stevens) joined various concurring opinions that did not suggest much sympathy. Only Alito among the majority directly addressed some evidence that the litigants here have some concrete reason to fear retaliation.
Scalia was the least sympathetic, appealing to history and guts ("the Home of the Brave") to show there is no constitutional right of anonymity in these cases, even if we were talking about some anonymous pamphlet. This goes too far, since a type of legislative act is different, voting to ratify the Constitution was different than anonymously writing the Federalist Papers. As Scalia noted: "When a Washington voter signs a referendum petition subject to the PRA, he is acting as a legislator." And, legislators -- see e.g., the openness required for the U.S. Congress -- are not anonymous when legislating.
What about the actual voting? Well, even if the secret ballot is a good policy, Scalia says it is not required by the First Amendment. This seems patently obvious -- the alternative would make town hall type voting unconstitutional. And, I think this gets to the heart of the question. I think supplying home addresses of those who sign such petitions is probably a bad policy. The justices were a tad too cavalier about the negative effects in controversial cases. It will in a few cases likely lead to harassment, made easier by the Internet. But, this doesn't make it unconstitutional.
[Elsewhere, a state resident informed me that he does not recall requests for address information, but the opinion and law does appears to so require. It is something of an important point, even if computer indexing can link names with voting precinct information to often get similar results.]
There is a tendency to belittle the possibility of harassment, and in scope, this is a valid point. Many of those crying harassment now do little when it pops up in other contexts; one person I debated with online even belittled the concern of harassment of children in school ("no one likes that but"). Some "harassment" is protected actually activity, such as disparaging speech and boycotts. But, I see no need to argue that there will be none. For instance, during the Prop 8 battle there were documented cases of vandalism against places of worship.
Thomas made it into some associational right. The ballot, however, moves it from private association to public policy. We have privacy over our associations, but when it affects the public, some of our privacy is lost. For instance, marriage is very private, but marriage licenses are public records, and the state is not acting unconstitutionally by making the names and addresses of those married public knowledge. Will this cause problems in some cases? Yes. But, to take a trite line from the conservative handbook, everything that hurts isn't unconstitutional.
Will this policy also make it somewhat more difficult to speak out as well? Sure. I don't know how much. 137,000 signatures were collected to put this on the ballot. Will the average person among this lot be targeted? The likely targets, and the ones I think brought up, would be those who are already publicly on record (perhaps by donations of more than trivial value that are on record via disclosure laws) including those in some fashion a significant voice (e.g., a church official or someone who wrote to the newspaper and was required to submit information by rules set forth by a private institution or a major hotel owner). But, again, signing on to a public referendum is a public matter that (constitutionally) can be open.
This does not justify illegal harassment, which can be targeted. For instance, the Prop 8 battle lead to some indefensible vandalism. Some legal methods often might be offensive or hard for the people involved (like boycotts), but protected all the same. This includes some collection of public information that might be used to illegal ends. We saw this all too well in regard to targeting of abortion doctors. The incitement to violence of some "want ad" websites might have crossed the line, but the mere listing of people involved did not. I speak legally; morally is another debate. And, that involves businesses, not public referendum to change the state constitution.
This ruling was correctly decided.
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Also, it is interesting how Scalia and Thomas part company here, only the former resting on history and explicit textual restraints. History is on Scalia's side here. Thomas doesn't appear even to address it. A tad selectively, he rather rest on "associational privacy" precedents that are not quite on point and broad principles.