Court Opinion

ID: 9789804
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 01:41:38.242456+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:24.473822
License: Public Domain

WILLIAMS, Justice
(dissenting).
The Constitution does not state that any person 31 years of age having been 10 years a qualified elector of this state shall be eligible to the office of Attorney General, nor has the legislature so spoken. Rather, to the converse, the Constitution states that "no person shall be eligible to the office of * * * Attorney General * * *, except a citizen of the United States of the age of not less than thirty-one (31) years and who shall have been ten (10) years next preceding his or her election, a qualified elector of this State.” (Art. VI, Sec. 3) (Emphasis added)
As said in the Stafford decision referred to
by the majority, the Legislature was granted authority by the Constitution (Art. Ill, Sec. 5) to prescribe a regulatory primary system [203 Okl. 132, 218 P.2d 617] “and this carries with it the authority to prescribe the qualifications of a candidate in such primary election.” (Emphasis added.)
Now, Title 26 O.S.1951 § 162, provides in pertinent part, “Any qualified elector, as defined in the Constitution and laws of the State of Oklahoma, who is a member of a political party, and who is now and has been affiliated with such legally recognized party at whose hands he seeks the nomination, shall have his name printed on the official ballot of his party for an office to which he is eligible in any primary election, upon filing with the proper officer, within the time provided by law, a Notification and Declaration of candidacy”. (Emphasis added.)
*1045The use throughout the list of requirements in this statute of the present tense indicates to me that the legislature intended that a proposed candidate seeking party-nomination be as of the date of the filing of his Notification and Declaration presently both an elector, a party member, currently and in the past affiliated with such party, and presently eligible (including being 31 years of age and having been ten years a qualified elector.)
These requirements are not attempts to subtract something from those set up in the Constitution, which could not be approved, but rather are merely additional requirements thought advisable by the legislature written by it into the laws which the Constitution mandated it to write establishing a primary election system.
I therefore respectfully dissent.