Court Opinion

ID: 9855820
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 06:31:36.554018+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:37:11.561331
License: Public Domain

PHELPS and STRUCKMEYER, Justices
(dissenting).
We dissent from the majority opinion insofar as it relates to appellant Cecil Cavender. It is our view that when a person submits his name as a candidate for public office subject to the direct primary and is defeated, he has exhausted his right to be a candidate at the general election.
Art. 7, § 10 of the Constitution requires that the legislature enact a direct primary election law “which shall provide for the nomination of candidates for all elective * * * offices * * Now, primary elections have application only to regularly constituted political parties; so if this language has any significance, it must mean that the winner of the primary election as nominee goes on the general election ballot and the loser does not. Otherwise, the underlying political theory that the cranks and the incompetents will be weeded out is destroyed and the basic purpose of the direct primary that by a process of elimination the number of candidates of a political party will be reduced to one is defeated.
As is pointed out, the framers of the Constitution in adopting the direct primary system intended to remove the abuses which had grown out of the old convention plan wherein the most qualified candidate, at least insofar as the majority of the members of the party were concerned, was not always chosen because the control of the Convention often fell into the hands of a select few who were not responsive to the will of the majority. To this extent, the direct primary accomplishes the basic objective inherent in representative government; namely, that the will of the majority governs. We therefore believe that the majority opinion of this court not only thwarts the underlying principle of the direct primary as proposed by the Constitution, but circumvents the governing wish of the majority members of a political party. This practice, if countenanced, will inevitably result in defeating the will of the majority of the party at a general election.
For this reason we believe the judgment of the lower court as to Cecil Cavender should be affirmed.