Court Opinion

ID: 9719081
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 07:42:08.460465+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:04.527864
License: Public Domain

COMPTON, J.
I concur.
I wish, however, to emphasize that the result is compelled, as Presiding Justice Roth indicates, by the language used in the statute and the lack of any persuasive evidence of the Legislature’s actual intent.
Once we have determined, as on this record we must, that the “candidate’s statement” is not limited to a recitation of his own qualifications and may contain reference to other matters, it necessarily follows that the registrar of voters cannot be constitutionally empowered to determine for himself which matters should or should not be included in the statement.
I suspect that the Legislature, with noble intentions, desired to afford citizens aspiring to nonpartisan elective office, an inexpensive method of partially escaping from complete anonymity. Regretfully they have achieved their purpose only at the expense of creating an instrumentality which is susceptible of flagrant abuse. That evil could have been constitutionally avoided by specifically limiting the statement to a recitation of personal background and qualifications. That, however, is not what the Legislature did.