Opinion ID: 1372923
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Interpretation of the West Virginia Constitutional Amendment

Text: The majority opinion today has erased every reasonable opportunity to construe this amendment in favor of the right of the people to exercise freedom of choice in their selection of the Republican candidate for the office of Governor. They make it impossible for the amendment to be reconciled with any theory of validity under Section I of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. The majority has treated long-established rules of constitutional construction as being inconsistent with and antagonistic to the intention of the electorate. They gratuitously engrafted an intention of the electorate with reference to the incumbent which cannot be found anyplace in the record before us. The majority does not tell us the source which enables them to divine the intention which they attribute both to the legislative drafters of the Governors Succession Amendment and to the electorate which approved it. The majority arrogates unto itself a prescience which becomes all the more mystifying when it is realized that, under their interpretation, the people of West Virginia are credited with a desire and intention to disenfranchise themselves when elsewhere, under the most recent decisions of the United States Supreme Court, the thrust has been to expand rather than restrict the right of franchise. The majority has elected to ignore or refused to apply all rules of constitutional construction favorable to enfranchisement. They acknowledge that every question with reference to eligibility must be resolved most strongly in favor of eligibility; and then, they refuse so to resolve it. They acknowledge that a retrospective application of a constitutional provision is not favored; and then they proceed to declare in favor of retrospective application to disenfranchise a portion of the electorate. They ignore the rule of construction that one should not be denied the right to be a candidate unless his ineligibility is expressly declared. Possibly the majority is troubled by their failure to find language expressly declaring ineligibility. They declare the will of the people, under questionable circumstances, but refuse to permit the people an opportunity to say what they meant. Thus, every reasonable avenue of conformity with the doctrine of expanding franchise under the United States Constitution has been closed by the majority to the people of West Virginia in the upcoming and in succeeding elections. Of six cases that have been found throughout all the nation and in all its recorded legal history, five of them in various ways have concluded that the incumbent could run again notwithstanding what appeared to be constitutional or statutory obstacles against it. Only the Lester Maddox case which did not stretch legal credulity has previously concluded otherwise. III