Court Opinion

ID: 9827704
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 17:47:27.301443+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:42:34.863024
License: Public Domain

On Behearing.
The appellant insists that we overlooked the contention that the sixteen votes in the Browning box cast for appellee should not have been counted “because only one officer assisted the voter in preparing the ballot.” We did not regard the contention as necessary of discussion in view of the decision under the former statute, substantially of the same wording and not different in purpose, reported in Hanscom v. State, 10 Tex. Civ. App. 638, 31 S. W. 547. In that case it was held that, the fact that a voter was assisted in preparing his ballot by one judge only is not ground for rejecting the ballot, in the absence of fraud, the statute not providing for its rejection on that ground. . Quoting from that case:
“In our opinion, these provisions are intended to protect the voter against danger of imposition from one judge, preparing his ballot without check upon his action. But it does not follow that all votes prepared by one judge without the presence of another are to be rejected. The statute does not so provide, and, in the absence of some declaration to that effect, these provisions upon the principles before stated should be held to be directory.”
That exact point is in the present case. The present statute (Rev. St. 1925, art. 3010) goes no further than to state that “two judges of such election shall assist” the disabled voter in preparing his ballot. As concluded in the original opinion, the penalty paragraph does not bear upon and include the direction of taking the preliminary oath, or of two judges assisting the voter. And, as before stated, the Penal Code does not provide a penalty,' having the same effect as negative words, against one judge only assisting a disabled voter. The eases holding observance of terms of the law absolutely required are upon a statute the language of which is of dissimilar import.