438
Opinion of the Court
waiver of his First Amendment right to remain free from espousing positions that he does not support, and discriminates against him based on the content of the message he seeks to convey through his vote. Brief for Petitioner 19. At bottom, he claims that he is entitled to cast and Hawaii required to count a "protest vote" for Donald Duck, Tr. of Oral Arg. 5, and that any impediment to this asserted "right" is unconstitutional.
Petitioner's argument is based on two flawed premises. First, in Bullock v. Carter, we minimized the extent to which voting rights cases are distinguishable from ballot access cases, stating that "the rights of voters and the rights of candidates do not lend themselves to neat separation." 405 U. S., at 143.8 Second, the function of the election process is "to winnow out and finally reject all but the chosen candidates," Storer, 415 U. S., at 735, not to provide a means of giving vent to "short-range political goals, pique, or personal quarrel[s]." Ibid. Attributing to elections a more generalized expressive function would undermine the ability of States to operate elections fairly and efficiently. Id., at 730.
Accordingly, we have repeatedly upheld reasonable, politically neutral regulations that have the effect of channeling expressive activity at the polls. See Munro, 479 U. S., at 199. Petitioner offers no persuasive reason to depart from these precedents. Reasonable regulation of elections does not require voters to espouse positions that they do not support; it does require them to act in a timely fashion if they wish to express their views in the voting booth. And there is nothing content based about a flat ban on all forms of write-in ballots.
The appropriate standard for evaluating a claim that a state law burdens the right to vote is set forth in Anderson. Applying that standard, we conclude that, in light of the adequate ballot access afforded under Hawaii's election code, the
8 Indeed, voters, as well as candidates, have participated in the so-called ballot access cases. E. g., Anderson, supra, at 783.
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