Source: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/193/621/
Timestamp: 2019-04-22 12:42:31+00:00

Document:
WILLIAM H. POPE, Plff. in Err., v.
JOHN M. C. WILLIAMS and John W. Harper, Officers of Registration, Constituting the Board of Registry for Election District No. 7 of Montgomery County, Maryland.
Argued: March 8, 9, 1904.
This is a writ of error to the court of appeals of the state of Maryland, to review its judgment affirming that of the circuit court for Montgomery county, which affirmed the proceedings of the board of registry of election district No. 7 of that county, refusing to register petitioner as a legal voter on the ground of his noncompliance with the Maryland law making it necessary for a person coming into the state, with the intention of residing therein, to register his name with the clerk of the circuit court of the proper county, and thereby to indicate the intent of such person to become a citizen and resident of the state.
The act in question was passed March 29, 1902, as chapter 133 of the laws of that year, and as an amendment and supplement to the Public General Laws of the State, title Elections, subtitle Registration, as § 25b, and it is reproduced in the margin.
'Said law is repugnant to that portion of § 1 of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, which declares that, 'all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside,' because by said law it is in effect ordained that male citizens of the United States of the age of twenty-one years and upwards, removing into the state of Maryland after March 29, 1902, with the intention of making said state their permanent domicil, shall not be treated as citizens or residents of Maryland, or given the rights and privileges of citizens of Maryland, until they have been naturalized in the mode prescribed by said law.
'Said law is also repugnant to that portion of § 1 of said 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States which prohibits a state from denying any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, because said law operates an unjust and unreasonable discrimination against citizens of the United States coming into the state of Maryland to permanently reside therein after March 29, 1902, who may desire to become qualified voters therein.
Messrs. John Prentiss Poe and Bowie F. Waters for defendants in error.
This is not a case of a statute of the state having been passed subsequently to the time when the individual had removed from another state or from a territory or from the District of Columbia into the state of Maryland. There is, therefore, no alteration of any possible rights which the plaintiff in error might have already acquired and which he might claim were taken from him by the passage of such statute. On the contrary, this statute took effect on March 29, 1902, more than two months prior to the removal of the plaintiff in error from Washington in the District of Columbia to Montgomery county, within the state of Maryland. The objections of a Federal nature which are made by the plaintiff in error to the validity of the statute are set out in his petition, and are also contained in the above statement of facts, and are substantially reproduced in his assignment of errors.
The privilege to vote in any state is not given by the Federal Constitution, or by any of its amendments. It is not a privilege springing from citizenship of the United States. Minor v. Happersett, 21 Wall. 162, 22 L. ed. 627. It may not be refused on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, but it does not follow from mere citizenship of the United States. In other words, the privilege to vote in a state is within the jurisdiction of the state itself, to be exercised as the state may direct, and upon such terms as to it may seem proper, provided, of course, no discrimination is made between individuals, in violation of the Federal Constitution. The state might provide that persons of foreign birth could vote without being naturalized, and, as stated by Mr. Chief Justice Waite in Miner v. Happersett, 21 Wall, 162, 22 L. ed. 627, such persons were allowed to vote in several of the states upon having declared their intentions to become citizens of the United States. Some states permit women to vote; others refuse them that privilege. A state, so far as the Federal Constitution is concerned, might provide by its own constitution and laws that none but native-born citizens should be permitted to vote, as the Federal Constitution does not confer the right of suffrage upon any one, and the conditions under which that right is to be exercised are matters for the states alone to prescribe, subject to the conditions of the Federal Constitution, already stated; although it may be observed that the right to vote for a member of Congress is not derived exclusively from the state law. See Fed. Const. art. 1, § 2; Wiley v. Sinkler, 179 U.S. 58, 45 L. ed. 84, 21 Sup. Ct. Rep. 17. But the elector must be one entitled to vote under the state statute. Id., Id. See also Swafford v. Templeton, 185 U. S. 487, 491, 46 L. ed. 1005, 1007, 22 Sup. Ct. Rep. 783. In this case no question arises as to the right to vote for electors of President and Vice President, and no decision is made thereon. The question whether the conditions prescribed by the state might be regarded by others as reasonable or unreasonable is not a Federal one. We do not wish to be understood, however, as intimating that the condition in this statute is unreasonable or in any way improper.
We are unable to see any violation of the Federal Constitution in the provision of the state statute for the declaration of the intent of a person coming into the state before he can claim the right to be registered as a voter. The statute, so far as it provides conditions precedent to the exercise of the elective franchise within the state, by persons coming therein to reside (and that is as far as it is necessary to consider it in this case), is neither an unlawful discrimination against any one in the situation of the plaintiff in error nor does it deny to him the equal protection of the laws, nor is it repugnant to any fundamental or inalienable rights of citizens of the United States, nor a violation of any implied guaranties of the Federal Constitution. The right of a state to legislate upon the subject of the elective franchise as to it may seem good, subject to the conditions already stated, being, as we believe, unassailable, we think it plain that the statute in question violates no right protected by the Federal Constitution.

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