The reprint at Ponyville's south press is priced at 18,600 bits, and the left column on the Amberstep First Chair ballot is blank where a name used to be.
Sable Harth, the Ledger Pact's candidate and a grain buyer who has stood for the Chair three times, was voided before noon by the High Bench of Amberstep. The order says he kept a winter loft in Greymantle Hold for six weeks during a bad harvest. The Bench read the loft as a second residence and a divided loyalty. A pony with a divided loyalty, the order says, cannot be trusted with a hold's levy.
The loft was a rented room over a feed store. The campaign listed it because the customs scroll had no line for a short stay. Colm Ash, the Sitting Chair, keeps a year-round loft two streets from the Bench and enters it as continuity of office. His papers were not called.
Piper Mallow, who owns the south press, cut the first run on a promise of payment after the filing window closed. The Bench reached her shop first.
"I set four thousand slips with his name on the left," Mallow said. "They can void a candidate. They cannot void the paper I already paid for."
The Election Harmony Board posted a notice that the ballot would be refreshed "in the interest of a clean choice." The supper budget was left where it was: 7,200 bits for linen, cider, and a speaker on civic warmth. The reprint is not in that budget. Mallow's invoice sits in her drawer under a stone so it will not blow off the counter.
Harth's filing fee, 2,400 bits, cleared yesterday morning. The clerk's window closed at four, after the void and before any talk of a refund. Lira Fen, the assessor who took the fee, said the schedule had no column for giving it back.
"The fee is for the filing," Fen said. "The filing happened. What the Bench does with a pony after that is a different page."
Dorrin Pell, who keeps a stall on the mill road, advanced eleven sacks of oats to the rally kitchen against a chit he still holds. The Board now calls the rally a gathering whose speaker "no longer meets the form." Pell said he did not advance oats to a form. He advanced them to a date on the square.
The order runs forty-one pages. Forty recite the dignity of the Bench and the need for candidates who are "wholly present." The forty-first page is the loft. A footnote says the feed store's owner called Harth "paid up and quiet." The footnote is not cited in the holding.
Ash's Standard Caucus did not file the case. A former pact clerk, retained by a civic guild on a standing grant from the Chair's office, brought it as a private petition. The filing called the loft "an outside hay interest." Greymantle is two days' walk and uses the same bits. On the guild's sheet the grant is entered as "public clarification."
By midafternoon the Board had sent a fresh template, Ash's name in the larger type and a blank line under it "should the Pact present a pony the Bench can hear." The Pact has until third bell tomorrow. The new filing fee is another 2,400 bits. Fen said her window will open on time.
No one at the Board could say who pays the 18,600 if the first run is pulped. A junior clerk said the cost could be shared across the community of the vote. The market levy is already up a twelfth this season for ballot security. So far that has bought a lock on the cupboard and a new ribbon for the seal.
Harth did not come to the steps. His grain clerk said forward contracts had been sold on the assumption Harth would stay on the paper through winter, and that buyers now wanted a discount for uncertainty. The uncertainty is a room over a feed store.
Ash's office sent six lines. They thanked the Bench for its care and said the Chair would not comment on a rival who "no longer occupies the question." The loft two streets from the court was not in the six lines. The continuity budget that pays for it posted this morning, on time, 640 bits for lamp oil and for counsel of the class that called a loft fatal in any pony who does not already hold the Chair.
Mallow locked the first run in the dry room so the ink would not smear while somepony decided if voided paper still counts as stock. She wrote 18,600 on the slate under the window, beneath the week's wages, which are not yet met. The fee Harth paid is in the court's strongbox. The strongbox does not reprint ballots.
