Court Opinion

ID: 9674527
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 04:30:16.409839+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:11:41.462811
License: Public Domain

Tom Glaze, Justice, dissenting. I am astounded by the court’s decision. Generally speaking, I feel this court has shown enlightenment when called upon to interpret reform legislation in a way to meet its purposes and goals. However, of the several theories the parties advanced in this case, the court has managed to accept the one argument that not only defeats the minimal election reforms gained by the passage of Act 465 of 1969, the Arkansas Election Code, its interpretation of that Code reverts to the way our election laws existed in 1874. At the same time the court’s decision effectively buries the serious allegations of widespread election fraud that arose out of the Conway County General Election on November 4, 1986. The court’s opinion is flawed in so many respects that I find it difficult to know where to begin; but I will try. First, I will begin with a brief recitation of what led to this appeal. Local option elections, commonly called “wet/dry elections,” are by law required to be held at the same time the general election is conducted. See Ark. Stat. Ann. § 48-801 (Supp. 1985) and § 48-824 (Repl. 1977). Here, a wet/dry election was held in Conway County on November 4, 1986. The Conway County Board of Election Commissioners (hereafter Commissioners) certified the “drys” as having won by thirty-three votes. Sixteen days later, the “wets” filed an election contest, alleging election fraud. Although the irregularities are too numerous to list here, some of the allegations were: * Election officials or their agents fraudulently substituted ballots that they previously marked for all the voters in two voting precincts; * Voters shown as having voted twice; *Nonresident and nonregistered voters had voted or were voted by someone other than the voter; *Ballots were marked by pencil, except the wet/dry question, which had been marked by pen (and vice versa); * Ballot boxes contained more ballots than voters named on the voter lists; *Erasures made in the “wet box” on ballots, which were counted as “dry” votes; *A dead person was voted; * Electioneering was practiced within the polling places. The Commissioners were served with the “wets’ ” complaint, but, for whatever reason, the Commissioners chose not to respond. About one month after the votes had been certified, four individuals, who were “drys,” filed a motion to intervene and asked the court to dismiss the wets’ complaint because they claimed Ark. Stat. Ann. § 48-820(2) (Repl. 1977) required the wets’ complaint to have been filed within ten days of the Commissioner’s certification of the vote, and the wets had filed their complaint six days too late. The trial court ruled the ten-day requirement had been superceded by the twenty-day requirement contained in Ark. Stat. Ann. § 3-1001 (Repl. 1976) of the Arkansas Election Code and the wets’ complaint was timely since it had been filed sixteen days after the vote was certified. The trial court also held the drys had not properly or timely intervened and the wets were entitled to a default judgment. The majority court opines that the ten-day requirement in the 1935 local option statute, § 48-820(2), controls because the twenty-day limitation in the 1969 code, § 3-1001, applies only to elections involving candidates. The majority’s conclusion here is “bad wrong.” If it were right that the Code applies only to the election of candidates and officials, the Arkansas General Assembly needs to convene immediately to enact some election laws to conduct elections which bear on millages, bonds, annexations, initiatives and referendum measures, just to name a few. Like local option elections, most of these questions are required to be placed on the ballot at the biennial general election. If the Code provisions (including its chapters on State and County Board of Election Commissioners, General and Special Elections, Conduct of Elections, Absentee Voting, Voting Machines, as well as Election Contests) apply only to candidates and not issues, then we have no election laws by which the state can conduct an election pertaining to the important ballot questions I listed above. Of course, such a conclusion is unthinkable. Instead, the conclusion that the Code applies to issue elections as well as ones involving candidates is unquestionably the case, at least until the majority’s decision today. The enactment of § 48-802 (Repl. 1977) (emphasis added), in fact, made it very clear that the local option elections shall be conducted by the Election Commissioners in the same manner as General Elections are conducted, and the same responsibility should rest upon all election officials conducting said election as in conducting General Elections, and only qualified electors shall be eligible to vote therein.”1  The Code, which covers all primary, special, and general elections, contains an entire chapter as to how election contests must be conducted. It also spells out the election officials’ duties in such contests and, after defining those duties and procedures, § 3-1004(c) of that Code chapter, concerning election contests, provides: . . .all laws pertaining to general and special elections or rules of political organizations holding primary elections providing for contest before political conventions or committees other than the proceedings herein provided shall be of no further force or effect. [Emphasis added] Clearly, the General Assembly intended by § 3-1004(c) to apply the election contest provisions of the Code to all general, special, and primary elections. On the other hand, § 48-802, a 1942 Initiated Measure noted above, shows conversely that the people intended the local option elections to be conducted pursuant to the election laws (the Code) that apply to the biennial general election. The entire idea or intent behind these laws or measures was to have a uniform election system which covered all elections, albeit for candidates or issues. For example, as alluded to earlier, most issue-type elections, including local option elections, have absolutely no laws that govern how they should be conducted except for the provisions contained in the Code. Furthermore, the election contest provisions which were established in the old 1935 local option law now clearly conflict with the contest provisions set out in the Code. Thus, to accept the majority’s logic that those 1935 election contest provisions are still viable means that two entirely different and conflicting election contest laws would apply to the same general election, when a local option was also held. See Ark. Stat. Ann. §§ 48-820 to -822 (Repl. 1979) and §§ 3-1001 to -1009 (Repl. 1976). Relying on certain language in § 48-820, the majority says that the election contest procedure in local option elections is independent from that which is provided in the Code. Wrong again! That statute was based upon the law as it was in 1935. At that time, election contests were within the jurisdiction of the county court. See Ark. Stat. Ann. § 3-1205 (Repl. 1956). Thus, the procedures in § 48-820, which direct election contests to be filed with the clerk of the county court, are simply no longer the law. The majority attempts to explain the outdated reference (in § 48-820) to “Board” as meaning “circuit court”, but such an explanation is undermined by reading the following statutory provision, § 48-821, which provides that contestants or contestees have a right to appeal “from the decision of the board to the circuit court.” Obviously, if a “board’s” decision was appealed to the circuit court in 1935, we cannot then equate the term board with the circuit court today. There simply is no reconciling these old terms and references contained in the 1935 local option contest procedures because they reflected, and meshed with, the general election laws as those laws existed in 1935. The local option laws have since changed in 1942, 1943, 1983, and 1985, as have the comprehensive election laws in 1969 and afterwards. When the Code provided for a twenty-day requirement in election contests, any statute in force contrary to that requirement was superceded. See § 3-1004(c). While the majority notes that § 48-820 was not specifically repealed by the Code, the Code did provide that all election contest laws, other than that contained in § 3-1004(c), were of no further force and effect. As a consequence, the local option ten-day requirement for filing election contests must fall to the twenty-day provision set forth in the Code. I make brief reference to the majority’s mention of Wurst v. Lowery, 286 Ark. 474, 695 S.W.2d 378 (1985), as authority that the ten-day requirement in § 48-820 is still law. Suffice it to say, the parties never contended in Wurst that such ten-day limitation was superceded by §§ 3-1001 and -1004(c), or, if they had, I am sure that Justice George Rose Smith, the author of Wurst, would have agreed Wurst would have had twenty, not ten days, to intervene in the local option contest involved there. However, if one is unconvinced by that position and believes the ten-day requirement was upheld as law in Wurst, I certainly have no hesitation in holding the court was wrong. Finally, while I conclude the twenty-day limitation is controlling and the wets timely filed their complaint, I am still of the opinion that they must show a prima facie case in accordance with the language contained in § 3-1002 of the Code. In other words, the trial court must require the wets to prove that their cause of action is such that the election results should be changed. In this respect, there is little difference between a default action in an election contest from one arising in any civil action. I regret the court’s decision today because I believe it does damage to our election laws. In particular, Arkansas citizens and voters bear an onerous burden, even under the Code, to investigate and confirm the election irregularities that are necessary to file a proper contest within the required twenty-day period — a ten-day period, on the other hand, is an impossible limitation to meet. Here, serious allegations of election fraud have been made and those allegations should either be proved or dispelled. Public interest demands it, or our citizens’ faith and confidence in their government will be diminished. Most of the people who were organized on both sides of this issue in Conway County are unquestionably honest and want only an accurate certified vote, devoid of fraud. Our decision does nothing to resolve the most serious questions that underlie this case, and, instead, allows the allegations of fraud to remain unchallenged. At the very least, I believe the prosecutor of the district or the state attorney general should investigate these fraud allegations and resolve them one way or another. 744 S.W.2d 386 Hays, J., joins in this dissent.   Section 48-802 was amended by § 2 of Act 266 of 1985 to provide for a four-year period (instead of a two-year period) lapse in time before another election can be held on the same question in the same affected territory.