BURDICK v. TAKUSHI 504 U.S. 428 (1992)

Write-in voting, whereby the voter unsatisfied with the official candidates listed on the ballot card can write in the name of any person she would like to be elected, has been a staple of elections since the adoption of the state-printed—or "Australian"—ballot at the end of the nineteenth century. In Burdick v. Takushi, however, the Supreme Court, in a 6–3 decision, held that write-in voting was not a constitutionally mandated mechanism for exercising the right to vote, upholding Hawai'i's ban on write-in voting in state and federal elections.

Alan Burdick, a Hawai'i citizen, argued that the ban impermissibly infringed on his freedom of speech, freedom of association, and right to vote under the first amendment and the fourteenth amendment. Although recognizing an impairment of Burdick's choice on election day, the Court, per Justice byron r. white, explained that all election laws governing ballot access, such as registration and qualification requirements, "invariably impose some burden upon individual voters." Because Hawai'i provided "easy access" to the primary ballot—requiring candidates to obtain only fifteen to twenty-five signatures depending on the office—the ban on write-in voting posed a "very limited" burden on voter choice that was justified by the state's interest in an efficient and orderly electoral process.

In his dissenting opinion, Justice anthony m. kennedy disagreed with the majority's conclusion that the burden on voting rights was insignificant. The very ballot access rules that the majority found to be liberal, Kennedy concluded were onerous, resulting in unopposed races in over one-third of state House of Representative elections and high numbers of blank, uncast ballots. Citizens who objected to the single candidate listed on the state-printed ballot in a given election had "no way to cast a meaningful vote."

Adam Winkler
(2000)