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.”
Wow! What arrogance!I guess all votes are NOT created equal.
I love this story.
— in New York State the election law BOE will not count a write in vote if the name already appears on the ballot, often serveral times in the case of fusion.
The EVIL party hacks in the D.C. regime can NOT get more deficit cash from the gerrymander Congress to count the votes to stimulate the local D.C. economy ???
How about employing the many unemployed to count the votes — due to such deficits ???
Reminder — Having elections is one of the very few things that *democratic* regimes MUST DO.
In the States — note the very dormant 14th Amdt, Sec. 2 — deemed much more important than 14th Amdt, Sec. 1 in the 1866 debates.
P.R. and A.V.
They didn’t seem to have a problem counting Charlie Wilson’s 43,687 write-in votes in Ohio in 2006: http://www.sos.state.oh.us/SOS/elections/electResultsMain/2006ElectionsResults/06-0502DemUSReps.aspx
That’s probably a lot more votes than Barr received in 2008 in D.C.
That’s the weird thing, Vaughn. If there are a lot of write-in votes, they seem easier to count for some reason. Rather backwards, don’t you think?
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Yeah counting votes is a waste of money that could be spent on Wall Street bailout bonuses.
Vaughn,
Nor did they have a problem with counting the 62,714 write-in votes for Tony Williams in the 2002 Democratic Primary for DC Mayor. He won as a write-in. So I guess something has changed at the Board of Elections in the past seven years.
http://www.dcboee.org/election_info/election_results/elec_2002/Primary.asp
“ELECTION DAY/IOWA TOWN GOES ON BALLOT DIET (ABC News) -Looking for a career change? May I suggest a move to New Liberty, Iowa. Population under 140(we found several different population figures as low as 121). November 3rd is election day. Want to be mayor? The NNS moved an item today which mentioned that the town’s Election Day slate is blank. Empty. Devoid of candidates. Which is not to say that there won’t be an election-“nobody filled nominating positions for any of the spots, so the ballot will be blank, with spaces for write-in candidates.†Should your write-in candidacy fail, don’t fret. The towns of Attalissa, Iowa (population 305) and Andover, Iowa (population under 100) are looking for mayors too.” – Charles Gibson
If only all elections were like this! – DFR
Is the issue here “fairness” or “practicality?” If “fairness,” then all votes should be counted. If “practicality” an argument can be made that the final effect isn’t changed by write-ins, so why bother with the expense?
I’d rather err on the American side of fairness.
Supporters of the current Electoral College would disagree, of course. They don’t care about “fairness.” If they did, they would see the inequity of one person’s vote in New Hampshire being worth much more than one person’s vote in Florida, or the inequity of one person’s vote being worth virtually nothing in “non” “battleground” states where there has been no contest, no campaigning…no question about the outcome…for the better part of decades.
They care more about practicality. They support a deeply flawed and uniquely unfair system of electing the president in deference to expediency.
Like ruling out write-in votes that are a pain to tabulate.
The federal campaign laws say a party that polls 5% for president in the last general election gets public funding for its next general election campaign. It is theoretically possible that the calculation of whether a party got 5% for president might depend on how many write-ins it got in certain states and/or D.C. For example, in 1968, George Wallace was credited with zero votes from D.C., because he wasn’t on the ballot and D.C. at the time banned write-ins for president. Wallace got 13%, but he or some future candidate might have got just about exactly 5%, and whether write-ins got counted might tip the balance. Another prominent presidential candidate who was credited with zero write-ins in D.C. was Eugene McCarthy in 1976. He wasn’t on the D.C. ballot, but he undoubtedly received some write-ins in D.C., but D.C. wouldn’t count them, even though a D.C. court in 1975 in the Kamins case had said D.C. must count such write-ins.
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