WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court Monday said the Constitution does not require states to allow write-in votes for candidates who are not on the ballot in primary and general elections.
By a 6-3 vote, the court upheld Hawaii's blanket prohibition against write-in voting in state and federal elections, saying it is adequately tempered by provisions that allow independent candidates to appear on the ballot.
In addition to Hawaii, three other states -- Nevada, Oklahoma and South Dakota -- have a complete ban on write-in voting; eight other states allow write-in voting in general elections but ban it in primaries; and at least 16 states require pre-registration by write-in candidates.
Monday's ruling is expected to allow those laws to remain in effect.
It also could have a particular impact this November if prospective independent presidential candidate Ross Perot is not able to get onto ballots in Hawaii, Nevada, Oklahoma or South Dakota.
Under Monday's ruling, voters in those states could not cast votes for Perot as a write-in.
A Honolulu resident -- represented by the American Civil Liberties Union -- claimed Hawaii's election procedures effectively eliminate the right of many residents to vote for the candidate of their choice.
Hawaii claimed its voting laws are not out of line with the rest of the nation, noting that more than 20 other states also limit the right to cast write-in votes.
The court, in a ruling by Justice Byron White, said it would not 'tie the hands' of Hawaii and other states in determining their election procedures.
'When a state's ballot access laws pass constitutional muster as imposing only reasonable burdens on First and 14th Amendment rights -- as do Hawaii's election laws -- a prohibition on write-in voting will be presumptively valid,' wrote White.
The case stems from a suit filed in 1986 by Alan Burdick, who claimed Hawaii's refusal to count his write-in vote violated his rights guaranteed by the First, Fifth, Ninth and 14th Amendments.
A federal district court sided with Burdick, ordering the state to let its residents cast write-in votes that would be counted in the November 1986 elections.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, however, stayed the injunction, and in 1988 reversed the district court, writing that some questions of state law needed to be addressed before the alleged constitutional violations were considered.
Last year the district court got the case again and found the state's bar on write-in voting violated the Constitution.
The 9th Circuit, in March, reversed, holding that while Burdick is 'guaranteed an equal voice in the election of those who govern,' he does not have an 'unlimited right to vote for any particular candidate. '
Burdick claims that he does, even if that candidate has no realistic chance to win an election.
In dissent Monday, Justice Anthony Kennedy echoed Burdick.
'The majority's approval of Hawaii's ban is ironic at a time when the new democracies in foreign countries strive to emerge from an era of sham elections in which the name of the ruling party candidate was the only one on the ballot,' wrote Kennedy.
'Hawaii does not impose as severe a restriction on the right to vote, but it imposes a restriction that has a haunting similarity in its tendency to exact severe penalties for one who does anything but vote the dominant party ballot,' Kennedy wrote.
In addition to the ban on write-in choices, Hawaii has some of the nation's most stringent laws regarding the placement of independent candidates on a ballot.
For an independent candidate running for an office other than president to be placed on Hawaii's general election ballot, he or she generally must get the signatures of 10 percent of registered voters who did not vote in a party primary.
In addition, new political parties hoping to run a candidate must submit their petitions 150 days before the primary date.
Both of those restrictions are the most severe in the nation.
But Hawaii claims its election laws are needed to prevent 'circumvention' by 'late-starting candidates,' and to ensure that voters have time to study the candidates of their choice.
White -- joined by Chief Justice William Rehnquist and justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Antonin Scalia, David Souter and Clarence Thomas -- said the state's rationale is sound.
'Common sense, as well as constitutional law, compels the conclusion that government must play an active role in structuring elections ...,' wrote White. 'Election laws will invariably impose some burden upon individual voters.'
Kennedy, joined by justices Harry Blackmun and John Paul Stevens, said Hawaii's ballot access laws 'taken as a whole impose a significant impediment to third-party or independent candidacies.'NEWLN: ------
91-535 Alan B. Burdick vs. Morris Takushi, director of elections, state of Hawaii, et al.
