You can find the brief here (via SCOTUSBlog).  Yesterday I wrote about how the Obama campaign brief relied upon equal protection principles from Bush v. Gore.  Here is the response of the state:

Respondents’ attempt to avoid this problem by analogizing to Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98 (2000), and Dunn v. Blumstein, 405 U.S. 330 (1972), also fails. Opp. 24. Those cases triggered heightened scrutiny because they did involve disenfranchisement. In Bush, the varying vote counting standards had “led to unequal evaluation of ballots in various respects.” 531 U.S. at 106 (emphasis added). Likewise, the Tennessee residency standard in Dunn “completely bar[red] from voting all residents not meeting the fixed durational standards,” thus “denying some citizens the right to vote” for illegitimate reasons. 405 U.S. at 336. Both cases, then, fundamentally interfered with the right to vote either by failing to count a lawfully cast ballot or by refusing to allow an eligible voter to cast one in the first place. Neither circumstance is present here. Stay App. 24-27.

How odd to characterize Bush v. Gore as a case in which the state “fail[ed] to count a lawfully cast ballot.”

The brief does not otherwise grapple with the “arbitrary and disparate treatment” language of Bush v. Gore, which is the key to the Obama campaign’s argument.