The commercial. (Union City, Tenn.) 190?-193?, 1919-06-27
WOMAN SUFFRAGE ACT
HELD NULL AND VOID
Chancellor Newman Held Legislative
Work Unconstitutional

Tennessee. This is the effect of al
opinion handed down by Chancellor
Newman in Part of the Chancery
court of Davidson County, Monday
morning, in the case of John ]. Yer
trees ct al. VS.. the State Board OF
Elections ct al, in which he declared
that the recent act of the Legislature
granting the women the right to vote
for presidential electors and munich
pal officers unconstitutional and void,
granted the injunction prayed for by
compliments and overruled the de-
murrer of defendants.
The constitutionality of the act
granting women the right of suffrage
and the validity of the Senate joint
resolution providing separate ballot
forms and ballot boxes for women
were the two questions involved in
the suit.
AS to the Senate joint resolution,
the chancellor said it did not rise to
the dignity of a statute, since it re-
quires a law to amend law, and
therefore has curative powers as to
the infirmities of the act which it
sought to remedy, and which the Leg
stature, by the passage of the resolu-
ton, acknowledged was abortive in
failing to provide machinery for hold
ing such elections. He held, there
fore, that the resolution, in SO far as
it seeks to remedy the defects in the
act to which it relates, was inopera-
tive and void.
In Cealing with the constitutionali-
ty of the act itself, the chancellor
agreed with counsel for the defense
that the Legislature of the state is
empowered by the constitution of the
state to appoint presidential electors
in such manner as it may direct.
However, he said, the Legislature is
not warranted in choosing as the
method of selecting presidential cleo
tors an agency, such as the Novem-
her election, created by the state con-
stitution, for state purposes, and null
lifying other sections of the constitu-
ton, but if the Legislature adopted a
method of appointing presidential
electors provided by the state for its
use and controlled by the state consti-
tuition, it must accept the agency as
it finds it, subject to all state consti-
tutional requirements and limita-
tions. He said the Legislature in
this case was not dealing with the
subject of appointing or providing
for the selection of presidential cleo
tors, but was dealing with the subject
of comforting upon women limited
suffrage. If the Legislature adopts
an agency not controlled by the state
constitution it is unhampered there
by in making all regulations, the
chancellor said, but this is not a
method to select presidential electors,
but to determine who shall partici-
pate in an election provided for in
the constitution and laws of Tennes-
see, which the Legislature long since
adopted as the method of electing
these electors.
With reference to providing sepa-
rate ballots and ballot boxes for
women voters, the chancellor said
that the election laws of, Tennessee
requires the names of all candidates
to be placed on one ballot and that
is legislative command to keep the
ballots togther, and an express IN
hibition from separating them.
He agreed that if more than one
ballot box was necessary to hold all
the votes, another ballot box might
be used, but that the votes cast by
one class of votes could not be sepa-
rated from those cast by another
class of voters. The chancellor was
of the opinion that no person has the
inherent right to vote, but that this
right was a granted, rather than a
natural right and that-the Legisla-
ture may grant, abridge or take away,
in it's discretion, the voting privilege
form any class of citizens, except
where it is limited or restricted by
the state constitution or forbidden
by the federal constitution.
AS regards municipal elections, the
chancellor said that municipalities
were merely arms or branches of the
state government, created by the Leg
islature, that the makers of the con-
stitution understood at the time it
was prepared that there were many
municipalities in Tennessee, and
that the Legislature would from time
to time create others with govern
mental powers over the people there
in residing, and that it was, therefore
difficult to understand how municipal