 Laura E. Little , writing in the Temple Law Review , notes the <unk> of guidance for either the District Court or Court of Appeals in Trinsey , with no " explicit direction and no direct precedent " from either the constitutional provisions or prior case law to rely on . In the absence of guidance , the Court of Appeals took a narrow view of the issues , something she <unk> . Under Pennsylvanian law , primaries are mandatory in all other elections , and in her opinion the lack of a primary in this case should have been judged to be a violation of Trinsey 's fundamental rights . Combined with the purpose of the Seventeenth Amendment - to ensure direct election - this should have led to the application of the strict scrutiny test , and the decision that the statute governing special elections was unconstitutional . Kevin M. Gold instead suggests that the test used in Valenti v. Rockefeller , an analogous decision over the validity of New York state electoral law . In Valenti , the judiciary applied the " substantial state interests " test , which involves simply looking at whether the statute in question <unk> the interests of the states , who under the Seventeenth Amendment are given some discretion as to the electoral process they use . 
