Court Opinion

ID: 9667482
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 01:47:05.915844+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:38.380780
License: Public Domain

NORVELL, Justice.
Perhaps the most important question in this case is that relating to the trial court’s action in permitting contestant to file a trial amendment, asserting that some 164 votes had been improperly counted for Vicars because it appeared that the stubs for these ballots had no signatures, as required by Article 8.15 of the Election Code. The propriety of this action and the scope of the trial court’s discretion with reference thereto is fully discussed in the original opinion filed herein and further comment is deemed unnecessary.
Upon rehearing, however, appellant Vicars takes a position which is hardly em*606braced within the original points of error filed herein, despite his specific reference to points Nos. 5, 6, 27, 28 and 30, as raising the contention. The motion follows the reasoning of the dissenting opinion based upon the theory of “fundamental error,” which asserts the proposition that the trial court erred in refusing to count some 276 votes (164 for Vicars and 112 for Stokely) because the corresponding stubs to the ballots were wholly blank, that is, not signed by the purported voter nor by anyone acting in his behalf, as required by Article 8.15 of the Election Code. The principal argument advanced is predicated upon the failure of the Legislature to specifically provide that when the voter fails to sign the stub his vote shall not be counted. We do not regard this failure or omission in wording as being of controlling importance.
As pointed out in the original opinion, there is a rule of general application which holds the voter strictly accountable for his failure to conform with the requirements which an election law or code places upon him. There is some appeal to a natural sense of justice in saying that if the citizen loses his vote by his own wilful failure to follow the rules prescribed for voting, he has only himself to blame. However, there is a more vital and fundamental consideration operating here. One of the stated designs of our election code is to “safeguard the purity of the 'ballot box against error, fraud, mistake and corruption.” Mr. Justice McCall of the Supreme Court, who served as Chairman of the Commission created by the Fifty-first Legislature to recodify and revise the Texas election laws, describes the detachable stub ballot law of 1949 as 'being “the most significant change in election procedure for many years.” McCall, History of Texas Election Laws, Vernon’s Ann.Tex. Election Code. Its purpose, as made abundantly clear by the emergency clause, was to change the theretofore existing “system of numbering ballots with •corresponding numbers on polling lists,” and thus insure a secret ballot and prevent election frauds.
Article 6.05, Vernon’s Tex. Election Code, largely taken from the 1949 enactment, Acts 51st Leg., ch. 329, p. 615, provides that each ballot shall have as a part thereof, a detachable stub formed by a perforated line upon which shall be printed the number of the ballot and the words, “Note: Voter’s Signature to be Affixed on Reverse Side.”
The election judge is specifically directed to “thoroughly disarrange and mix the ballots so that they no longer are in consecutive numbered sequence or in any sequence of arithmetic or geometric progression, and then place the ballots face down in a stack or stacks from which each voter shall be allowed to take his own ballot without the number being known to or written down in any manner by the election judge.” Article 8.11, Vernon’s Tex. Election Code. After voting, the signed stub is detached from the ballot and the ballot placed in a box and the stub in another and separate box. Article 8.15, Vernon’s Tex. Election Code.
It is readily apparent that the purpose of the stub ballot law is to prevent the identity of a voter who cast a particular ballot from becoming known either from the use of a poll list or from any method other than that of matching a signed stub with a ballot bearing an identical number. It is likewise equally clear that the Legislature intended that when pertinent in an election contest, a court would have a means of ascertaining the identity of the voter who cast a particular ballot, by matching the stub with the ballot. It was not the purpose of the stub ballot law to render election contests impossible, for that would obviously encourage and invite ballot stuffing and kindred election frauds. In this particular case, the district judge upon opening the ballot boxes found almost 300 ballots placed in the ballot boxes by some person or persons who can not be identified. If *607the stub to ballot numbered 306, for instance, is not signed, the identity of the person who placed that ballot in the ballot box is for all reasonably practical purposes, wholly unascertainable. Whether this ballot was placed in the box by a legal voter, an alien, an unpardoned convict, a corrupt ballot stuffer, a wandering child, or any other person who by chance, design or otherwise may have had access to a ballot, must remain forever a mystery. When the scheme of plan of the stub ballot law is considered with its obvious purpose of protecting the secrecy of the ballot, on the one hand, and preventing election frauds, on the other, the verity of this statement contained in the original opinion seems apparent: “To hold that a voter’s signature on the stub is unnecessary would be to repeal the secret ballot law of Texas, which the Legislature has enacted.” Without the mandatory requirement of a signed stub, the law becomes a farce. Instead of providing for the purity of the ballot, it becomes an invitation to corruption. No district judge upon finding hundreds of ballots and knowing not from whence they came, should be required to afford them authenticity. If such action be required we might well ask, Why have a stub at all?
Fox v. Nail, 294 S.W.2d 407, by the El Paso Court, seemingly places the matter of counting ballots with unsigned stubs within the discretion of the trial court and may not for that reason conflict directly with our decision. However, for the purpose of clarity, we should perhaps say that, in our opinion, the cited case of Fugate v. Johnson, Tex.Civ.App., 251 S.W.2d 792, by this Court, does not support the broad proposition that ballots with wholly unsigned stubs may nevertheless be counted. In the Fu-gate case the question related to the validity of a ballot when the stub was not signed personally by the voter, and it was pointed out that Article 8.15, Vernon’s Tex. Election Code, authorizes the signing of a stub by one other than a voter under certain conditions. 251 S.W.2d loc.cit. 794.
The motion for rehearing is overruled.