Fair Play for Candidates

For each election Los Angeles County prints sample ballots with information about state and county measures and with candidates’ statements about themselves. Some candidates, that is. The statements aren’t printed free. They appear only if candidates for such nonpartisan countywide offices as Superior Court judge, assessor and sheriff can afford to pay $52,000. That’s excessive.

The price varies, depending on the office sought and thus the number of voters who must be reached. Los Angeles Municipal Court judges pay $21,000, Downey candidates $200. The countywide charge works out to 1.5 cents per voter. But in a county as large as this one, the fee for ballot statements for major offices discriminates against candidates who are not rich. Candidates may have some assets or campaign funds, but may not want to sink them all into a ballot statement. True, they can declare themselves indigent--as did assessor candidate John Lynch, who now acknowledges that perhaps he can pay.

County election costs, which already total $12 million for a primary, would undoubtedly increase if the county footed the bill for the statements. In countywide offices alone this year, there were 28 candidates in the primary; if all had elected to publish a ballot statement and if the county had paid the entire bill, that would have added $1.4 million to printing expenses.

Judge Leon Kaplan of the Los Angeles Municipal Court, a candidate for Superior Court, filed for a preliminary injunction before last week’s primary election, asking that the county print ballot statements for all candidates at a reasonable fee or for no candidates at all. Kaplan argued that, as one court decision said, “freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion are available to all, not merely to those who can pay their own way.”

The U.S. District Court disagreed, saying in effect that a ballot statement is a campaign expense and that Kaplan should be prepared to pay it. A federal appeals court said that Kaplan hadn’t satisfied the legal requirement for an injunction, showing that he would be irreparably harmed by the county’s fee system, so it turned him down. But the court added that he had raised a significant question. “A governmental offering of space in the voters’ pamphlet only to those candidates tendering the cost may violate important constitutional rights,” the court said.

We agree. The courts should look carefully at any procedure that inhibits the ability of candidates to express their opinions in a public forum, which is what the sample ballot is. The courts should remove this obstacle by ruling that the requirement of paying for a ballot statement is unconstitutional. In the meantime, the county should remove the obstacle by voluntarily paying for the printing for everybody or eliminating the statements entirely.