Court Opinion

ID: 9692238
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 15:48:06.291609+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:19:33.416760
License: Public Domain

Justice EAKIN,
Dissenting.
The majority has taken the plain, lucid, unambiguous phrase “the name of any person not already printed on the ballot” and used “liberal interpretation” to make it mean “the name of any person whether already printed on the ballot or not.” This is not liberal interpretation; it is judicial alchemy to which I cannot subscribe.
Legislative phrases that are clear should not give rise to judicial reinterpretation, much less the pursuit of the phantasm of legislative intent. When the legislature speaks clearly, as here, it matters not what a court wishes to divine as their collective intent, whether in pursuit of a sympathetic result or not. It is an invasion of the legislative prerogative to transmogrify clear and unambiguous words into an opposite result.