D.C. Board of Elections: Write-ins too much bother to count

from Ballot Access News
D.C. Board of Elections Tells Court Write-ins Are Too Much Bother to Count
October 15th, 2009

The District of Columbia Board of Elections has filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit Libertarian Party v District of Columbia Board of Elections, pending in federal court, 09-cv-1676. The issue is whether the Board should be required to count the write-ins for Bob Barr for president in last November’s election. The ballots still exist. Here is the Board’s 21-page brief.

The Board’s brief says, “Because tabulation of all write-in votes would need to be done by hand, the increased personal costs would be a substantial burden on the Board’s limited resources.” Also, the Board says, “Requiring the Board to tabulate all write-in results would cause a significant delay in the reporting of election results because all write-in votes need to be tabulated by hand.” The Board does not give any other governmental interest in refusing to tally the votes for declared write-in presidential candidates.

The Board seems to assume that if the Libertarian Party won the lawsuit, all write-ins would need to be tallied. But the Libertarian Party is only asking that write-ins for declared write-in candidates be counted. Bob Barr was the only person who filed a slate of presidential elector candidates and a write-in declaration of candidacy last year.

The U.S. Supreme Court said in Dunn v Blumstein, 405 U.S. 330 (1972), “The right to vote cannot be abridged to save the state money or inconvenience.” In Tashjian v Republican Party of Connecticut, 479 U.S. 208 (1986), the Court said, “The cost oof administering the election system is not a sufficient basis here for infringing appellees’ First Amendment rights.” And in Gray v Sanders, 372 U.S. 368, the Court said, “Every voter’s vote is entitled to be counted once. It must be correctly counted and reported.”