Under current Wyoming law, a write-in candidate at the general election can request that write-in votes for him or her be tallied. The request need not be made until two days after the general election. The Wyoming Secretary of State’s omnibus election law bill this year, S20, provides that the Secretary of State can charge a fee for this service. The bill calls it an “administrative fee” and does not set the amount of the fee. It says the amount will be set by rule and regulation.

Courts in three states have already ruled that the U.S. Constitution does not permit states to charge a filing fee for declared write-in candidates. The cases are from the California Supreme Court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th circuit, and a U.S. District Court in West Virginia. The only permitted rationale for filing fees is to keep ballots from being too crowded. Write-in candidates’ names are never printed on ballot, by definition, so the logic of requiring a filing fee for them doesn’t exist. States are not permitted to charge fees, for either voters or for candidates, merely for the purpose of helping pay for election administration, according to several decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court. For example, in Tashjian v Republican Party of Connecticut, 479 U.S. 208, at page 218, the Court said, “Increases in the cost of administering the election system is not a sufficient basis here for infringing appellees’ First Amendment rights.” In Carrington v Rash, 380 U.S. 89, at 86, the Court said states may not injure voting rights “because of some remote administrative benefit to the state.”