Opinion ID: 2514024
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: violation of article ii, section 8

Text: {27} Article II, section 8 provides: All elections shall be free and open, and no power, civil or military, shall at any time interfere to prevent the free exercise of the right of suffrage. Assuming courts have the power to fashion remedies not included in the Election Code, the issue is whether the omission of the candidates' names from the ballot violated article II, section 8. Our appellate courts have never published an opinion interpreting this section. Although four states (Colorado, Missouri, Montana, and South Carolina) have free and open clauses in their state constitutions, we have been unable to find any useful interpretations, bearing on this issue, of those clauses in their case law. Thirteen states require that elections be free and equal, language that is similar enough, in that it connotes all eligible voters should have the chance to vote, so that their interpretations might inform our interpretation of our own provision. {28} Section 6 of the Kentucky Constitution requires that all elections be free and equal, and Kentucky has the most developed jurisprudence of any state on what that clause means in relation to ballot problems. In an early case, the Kentucky Court of Appeals announced that no election can be free and equal ... if any substantial number of persons entitled to vote are denied the right to do so. Wallbrecht v. Ingram, 164 Ky. 463, 175 S.W. 1022, 1026-27 (1915). It also held that a party seeking to prove that an election was not free and equal did not have to prove that fraud or other wrongdoing occurred; negligence is sufficient. See id. at 1027. The Kentucky Supreme Court has invalidated election results three times due to violations of section 6. In Lakes v. Estridge, 294 Ky. 655, 172 S.W.2d 454, 454 (1943), the ballot was printed incorrectly in three of the five precincts; the proper candidates were not listed. The Court concluded that the election was not free and equal. See id. at 456. In Hillard v. Lakes, 294 Ky. 659, 172 S.W.2d 456, 456 (1943), the ballot listed the wrong candidates in one of three precincts, and the Court concluded that the election was not free and equal and that the office must be considered vacant. In Ferguson, 449 S.W.2d at 760, the county clerk omitted the name of one qualified candidate from the ballot, and the Court concluded that the election was not free and equal. {29} We believe these cases rest on a fundamental principle that an election is only free and equal if the ballot allows the voter to choose between the lawful candidates for that office and that the same principle should guide our interpretation of the free and open clause in article II, section 8. We therefore conclude that a constitutional violation occurred here.