Judge blocks Democrat who won Republican write-in nomination in Burlington Township

A Superior Court judge has blocked Bryan Lasater from accepting the Republican nomination for Burlington Township Council because he was a registered Democrat when he won the GOP primary through a write-in campaign, even though he subsequently switched his affiliation to Republican.

Terrence Cook, the assignment judge, upheld Burlington Township Clerk Mary Field’s decision not to certify Lasater, who received enough votes in the June 2 Republican primary to qualify for the November ballot but was registered as a Democrat at the time.

“Because plaintiff was, at all relevant times, a registered Democrat, he was not eligible to participate as a candidate in a closed Republican primary,” Cook said. “It follows that he cannot accept a Republican nomination for the general election ballot.”

“Simply stated, plaintiff, a Democrat, cannot participate in the Republican primary in any manner,” Cook said.

Cook also rejected Lasater’s alternative request to appear without a party designation.

Lasater received 44 write-in votes under the correct spelling of his name and another seven under “Brian Lassiter,” giving him the number required to win one of three Republican nominations for full council terms.

Field acknowledged the vote total in a June 15 letter but refused to certify him because the Statewide Voter Registration System listed him as a Democrat. Lasater filed suit three days later.

Lasater, who represented himself, argued that New Jersey law establishes separate requirements for petition candidates and write-in nominees: one expressly requires a candidate filing a Republican primary petition to be a Republican, while another—the statute governing successful write-in candidates —does not contain the same party-membership requirement.

“This case is not about whether my registration decision was politically wise,” Lasater argued in court papers. “It is about whether the court should add a qualification that the Legislature placed on the petition statute but omitted from the write-in statute.”

Lasater said he had been a Republican for most of his life but changed his registration to Democratic approximately two years ago because Burlington Township is heavily Democratic and he was considering running in that party’s primary.  He changed his registration back to Republican after the June primary but acknowledged that the change did not retroactively alter his status on Election Day.

At the hearing, Lasater invoked his military service and the voters who supported him.

“Their votes have not been counted.  They’ve only been tallied,” he said.  “What I’m asking the court to do is show those residents that their votes do count by placing my name on the November ballot.”

Lasater, a military veteran, recalled being deployed to the Middle East following the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing and being unable to vote because his absentee ballot never arrived.

“When I say I know how it feels for your vote not to count, I know it from the perspective of defending democracy in a hostile fire zone while not being able to exercise it myself,” Lasater stated.

The Burlington County Republican Committee formally supported Lasater’s lawsuit. Its attorney, Chris Koutsoukis, argued that concerns about Democrats raiding a Republican primary were misplaced because qualified Republican voters cast the write-in votes.

“Voting is one of the most sacred rights that we have as a people,” Koutsoukis said. “When voters take the time to go to the polls and vote, they are expressing their will for who will govern them or who they desire to govern them.”

Cook pressed Koutsoukis on whether Republican primary voters had a reasonable expectation that the person they were writing in was a Republican.  Koutsoukis acknowledged that he did not know whether the voters were aware that Lasater was registered as a Democrat.

Mark Natale, an attorney representing Field, conceded that the write-in statute does not expressly require party affiliation.  But he argued that the provision could not be read in isolation from the remainder of New Jersey’s election laws and decades of court decisions protecting closed primaries.

“What I contend is it is not spoken to,” Natale said. “So the court needs to look at extrinsic evidence as the Supreme Court instructs them as to what the legislative intent was.”

Natale said Republican voters had a reasonable expectation that candidates promoted in their primary were members of their party.  He also argued that allowing Lasater’s nomination could establish a statewide mechanism for one party to interfere with another party’s primaries.

“The next time it is in front of this court, it will be an opposing party deciding to spend money and resources to prop up a write-in candidate who they never disclose is a member of the opposing party,” Natale said.

The record showed that Lasater was approached by Republican mayoral candidate Robert Michael Jack Shull about running as a write-in candidate.  Lasater’s spouse posted a public appeal the day before the primary saying he needed write-in votes, and flyers promoting Lasater were distributed at his child’s school.

Cook said the degree of Lasater’s personal involvement was not dispositive, but it distinguished his case from a 1974 ruling involving a candidate who received another party’s write-in nomination without his knowledge.

“If a write-in campaign can be used to place a candidate of another party onto a party’s primary ballot without that candidate ever having joined the party, filed as one of its own members or subjected himself to the petition process, then the write-in mechanism would function as a back door,” Cook said.

“You cannot do by indirection what you cannot do directly,” the judge said.

Cook said the relatively small number of votes required to qualify for local office illustrated the potential consequences of Lasater’s interpretation.

“In this case, the numbers in particular — 44 write-in votes — show how low of a bar that would be,” Cook said.

The ruling leaves Republicans with only two candidates for three full-term council seats.