Court Opinion

ID: 9632171
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 11:05:42.267162+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:08:10.220077
License: Public Domain

WOLFE, Chief Justice
(concurring in the result).
I concur on the ground that in this case no one was prejudiced by the absence of the City Recorder’s certificate
“that the law contained thereon [on the petition copy] is * * * the true and correct number and title of the law as proposed for referendum”,
*590as required by Section 20-11-13, Utah Code Annotated 1953. The departure from the statute was substantial because the purpose of this requirement was to protect signers from being misled into signing a petition copy which did not pertain to the ordinance whose reference they intended to petition for. The matter of the style and size of the type used and the place on the petition copies where the registered voters were designated by the County Clerk are insubstantial requirements. The time table provided in Chapter 11 of Title 20 for the doing of certain acts preceding the placing of a referred ordinance on the ballot in a city election has been used several times with no trouble. But an ordinance may be passed at such time that to accommodate the time to the fixed prospective election day may require utmost cooperation of the County Clerk and City Recorder.
As Mr. Justice WADE suggests the matter of paramount importance is to give the voters in the town opportunity to vote on the ordinance. While I consider it also important to maintain the integrity of the various parts of the act so that each part may serve the purpose for which it was designed, in this case we may rest assured that no harm can be done by dispensing with the safeguard which the certificate was intended to provide, especially in view of the importance of the right to vote on the ordinance, the knowledge that no one was misled, and that the title of the ordinance which the petitioners were seeking to refer was correctly printed on each petition copy, along with the date of its enactment.
I also agree that the refusal of the City Recorder to certify as required by Section 20-11-12 that the petition copies presented to her by the sponsors, which they had had printed at their own expense, were true and correct copies of the original petition (not to be confused with the certificate required by Section 20-11-13) was not justified and hence it should not defeat the sponsors’ attempt for referendum.