Court Opinion

ID: 9635464
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 13:51:06.607786+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:09:27.348097
License: Public Domain

PITTMAN, Judge
(concurring specially as to part II).
I agree with the majority holding that the Alabama six months residency requirement is unconstitutional, but I do not wish to indicate that I think all durational or calendar residency requirements are unconstitutional. Blumstein v. Ellington (M.D.Tenn.1970), p. 11 of the majority opinion, is cited with ap*125proval. The court in that case declared unconstitutional a three months county residency requirement. Although I agree with the general tenor of the case, and its treatment of the necessary compelling state interest, I disagree with its ultimate holding striking down a three months county residency requirement.
I recognize the principle that the state must have a compelling interest to place any restriction on the right to vote: On page 113 of the majority opinion, it is stated “Defendants have not proferred to us any compelling interest of the state that would necessitate the six and three month residency requirements to vote, nor do we perceive any on the basis of our judicial knowledge and experience.” I disagree. I think Alabama has a compelling interest which justifies placing a durational or calendar residency requirement on the right to register and vote. In determining a compelling state interest, the court should not ignore those things of which it has judicial knowledge nor which are of common knowledge. The legislatures of most states have required voters, as well as candidates, to be residents for varying lengths of time prior to registration for voting.1 Durational residency requirements enable the voter to better understand and inform himself on state and local issues, geography, political, social and economic problems.
A durational residency period will give the voter an opportunity to know and evaluate the candidates who seek to have the leadership role as an elected official among them. It is true that political hucksters and image makers using the mass news media can make a face and name familiar, but we are all too well aware of the difference between image and reality.
The Alabama Legislature removed durational or calendar residency requirements in divorce actions when both parties are before the court.1A The “quickie divorce” scandal which followed is well known. In connection with “quickie divorces,” lawyers have been suspended or disbarred and the divorce jurisdiction of a judge removed. In recent weeks indictments have been returned against other lawyers and judges in connection with charges arising out of the so called “quickie divorces.”
The “quickie divorce” scandal in Alabama illustrates how easily residency can be abused and fraud and corruption reach alarming proportions where there is no durational or calendar period of time in which a person’s intention to be a resident can be demonstrated by acts as well as words. The right to vote should be unencumbered, but common sense regulations are mandatory if the integrity of the ballot box and registration rolls are to be maintained. I cannot ignore the experience and knowledge acquired by my approximate fifteen years as a State Circuit Judge when I handled 150-200 divorce cases a year wherein there was demonstrated the inherent advantages of durational or calendar residency requirements and the difficulties attendant to determining residency without such requirements.2
There are other recognized qualifications on the right to vote such as citizenship, age, sanity, no prior conviction of felony or crime involving moral turpitude unless civil rights have been restored.3 It is a fact of life that some regulations provide greater freedom whereas no regulations would result in license.
With no durational or calendar residency requirements other than the last registration period, if not within ten days prior to an election,4 what is to pre*126vent self-seeking interest groups from roaming the state, county by county and precinct by precinct, registering in large numbers and virtually taking over or controlling local governments?
It was stated in Shapiro v. Thompson, 394. U.S. 618, 89 S.Ct. 1322, 22 L.Ed.2d 600 (1969), a welfare case in which a one year residency requirement was struck down, pp. 636, 637, 89 S.Ct. p. 1332, that the arguments of a waiting period as an efficient rule of thumb would not withstand scrutiny in that ease because “before granting an application, the welfare authorities investigate the application, employment, housing, and family situation and in the course of the inquiry necessarily learn the facts upon which to determine whether the applicant is a resident.” There is no such investigative machinery in Alabama in connection with the registration to vote. It is common knowledge that here registration is based principally on answers by the registrant, and close to an election it is a hectic and frantic experience for registrant and registrars.
It could well be that the emerging role of Negro voters and candidates, particularly in those counties where they have a majority, could be overwhelmed by outside groups registering in their respective counties in such numbers as to place them in the minority.
I would hold Alabama’s six months county residency provisions unconstitutional because it is infected with racial discrimination. Alabama’s first and second Constitutions of 1819 and 1861, Article 3, Section 5, respectively, had durational residency requirements of one year for the state and three months for the county. The vast majority of Negroes were slaves and there could not have been a racial purpose in these provisions. The Constitution of 1868, Article 7, Section 2, had a state requirement of six months and a county requirement of three months.5 The 1901 Constitution, Amendment XCVI, raised the residency requirements in the state to two years and county to one year. Amendment 207 to the Alabama Constitution of 1901 reduced the residency requirements in the state to one year and in the county to six months.6
Without question, the increase of the residency requirements subsequently to the emancipation of the Negro slaves falls within a suspect classification.7
The vote is the single most powerful instrument of a citizen in our country. In most instances, elective office depends on a majority vote. Enormous sums of money are spent to win elections. If history is worthwhile as a teacher, one of its lessons has been that fraud and corruption are not unknown in elections.
Our society is the most mobile in world history. Means of communication have vastly improved the quickness one can obtain knowledge, yet this very mobility and this very ease of communication has built-in dangers. The way is opened for persons intent upon fraud, or those with special interests, to impose their will upon local areas by outside persons flooding the registration process just before an election. The image makers can complete the job. To safeguard the sanctity *127of the ballot box, the integrity of its registration rolls, and to assure that local government will be by and of bona fide local residents, constitute a compelling state interest to set durational residency requirements. A “quickie voter” registration can, and probably would, develop and flourish as fast as the “quickie divorce” racket came into being in Alabama.

. Am.Jur.Desk Book, Doc. No. 117 (1962).

. Ala.Code, Tit. 34, §§ 27, 29, Recomp. (1958).

. Id.

. See Lassiter v. Northampton County Bd. of Elections, 360 U.S. 45, 51, 79 S.Ct. 985, 3 L.Ed.2d 1072, 1077 (1959). 29 C.J.S. Elections §§ 15-35.

. Persons in Alabama may register to vote if not within ten days of an election. Ala.Code, Tit. 17 § 27(2), Recomp. (1958)

. McMillan, Constitutional Development in Alabama, 1798-1901, A Study in Politics, the Negro and Sectionalism (1955), at p. 138 stated the 1868 Constitution was one in which the Reconstructionists “[rjeduced the residency requirement * * * [so that] Carpetbaggers and Negroes might become candidates for the * * * legislature. * * *” That three months county residency provision could hardly be termed racially discriminatory against the Negroes.

. McMillan, supra, p. 363, “restrictions were written into the Constitution of 1875 until it became an ‘instrument of prohibition’.” “ * * * legal expedients were used to control the Negro vote from 1875 to 1901.” And, p. 276, “the long residency requirement, for instance, would effect adversely the Negro * *

. “It should be noted * * * that all legal restrictions which curtail the civil rights of a single racial group are immediately suspect.” Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214, at 216, 65 S.Ct. 193, at 194, 89 L.Ed. 194, at 199; Developments in the Law — Equal Protection, 82 Harv.L.Rev. 1124-27 (1969)