Court Opinion

ID: 9659401
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 21:43:39.125586+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:07.630195
License: Public Domain

COOPER, Justice,
concurring.
Fletcher and Bates filed their joint candidacy papers and formed their campaign committee on December 3, 2002. On their candidacy papers, each swore that “if finally elected, we will qualify for our offices.” KRS 118.125(2)(b) (emphasis added). Since they were required to run as a slate and neither could appear individually on the ballot for the office he was seeking, KRS 118.127, each effectively warranted that, if elected, both would qualify for the respective offices they were seeking. Section 72 of the Constitution of Kentucky provides in pertinent part:
The Governor and the Lieutenant Governor shall be at least thirty years of age, and have been citizens and residents of Kentucky for at least six years next preceding their election.
Thus, in order to qualify for the office of Lieutenant Governor, Bates must have been a resident of Kentucky for at least six years next preceding November 4, 2003. As of November 5, 1997, Bates was a resident of Alexandria, Virginia, and he remained so until no earlier than February 2002 when he and his wife purchased a home in Goshen, Kentucky. Shain v. Bates, 03-CI-153, Oldham Circuit Court, Ky., Div. II (March 26, 2003). Thus, from and after November 5, 1997, Bates was disqualified to hold the office of Lieutenant Governor of Kentucky if elected on November 4, 2003. More specifically, he was disqualified to hold that office when he and Fletcher filed their candidacy papers and formed their campaign committee on December 3, 2002.
The word “disqualification” has two recognized definitions:
1. The act of disqualifying, or state of being disqualified; want of qualification; incompetency; disability; as, the disqualification of certain men from holding office.
2. That which disqualifies; that which incapacitates or makes unfit; as, conviction of a crime is a disqualification of a person for office; sickness is a disqualification for labor.
Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary (Miera, Inc. 1996, 1998). These definitions are lifted from Fletcher’s brief which attributes significance to the order in which the definitions are listed, i.e., the first fist-ed definition is preferred and the second fisted definition is only secondary. However, Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary fists the definitions in the reverse order. See Merriam-Webster Dictionary Online (visited May 7, 2003) <http://www.m-w.com. html>. I conclude, as does the majority opinion, that the definitions are of equal weight depending upon the context in which they are applied.
The judgment of the Oldham Circuit Court, supra, did not purport to “disqualify” Bates but only declared that “Bates is not a bona fide candidate for the office of Lieutenant Governor of Kentucky” and ordered his name stricken from the ballot. Unlike the majority opinion, I attribute no significance to the fact that the Secretary of State initially certified the Fletcher-Bates slate. KRS 118.165(2) only requires that the Secretary of State, prior to certification, “examine the notification and declaration form of each candidate to determine whether it is regular on its face.” (Emphasis added.) Clearly, the notification and declaration form filed by the Fletcher-Bates slate was “regular on its face” and the Secretary of State was under no duty to go behind the form to determine the *407accuracy of the information contained therein.1 That is the duty of the appropriate circuit court upon the filing of a challenge to the “bona fides” of a candidate pursuant to KRS 118.176.
Bates’s failure to appeal the judgment of the Oldham Circuit Court triggered the language in KRS 118.127 that “No candidate for Governor ... shall appear individually on the ballot for the nomination he is seeking,” and the viability of Fletcher’s gubernatorial candidacy thus depends upon whether he could, pursuant to KRS 121A.080(11), designate a replacement candidate to fill the vacancy created by Bates’s removal from the ballot. That statute provides in pertinent part:
If a vacancy occurs in a slate of candidates ... because of death, disqualification to hold the office sought, or severe disabling condition which arose after the slate formed a campaign committee, the remaining member of the slate may designate a replacement....
(Emphasis added.)
Heleringer’s primary argument is that the qualifying clause, “which arose after the slate formed a campaign committee,” applies to each contingency, i.e., death, disqualification, or severe disabling condition. Although the majority opinion addresses this issue, it cannot, in fact, reach it because the majority concludes that Bates became qualified when the slate was certified by the Secretary of State. Thus, according to the majority, Bates did not become “disqualified” until he failed to appeal from the judgment of the Oldham Circuit Court. While I believe Bates was disqualified before the slate ever formed a campaign committee, I reach the same conclusion as the majority’s dictum, but not on the basis of the absence of a comma before the word “which.”
Punctuation marks are no part of an act. To determine the intent of the law, the court, in construing a statute, will disregard the punctuation, or will repunctuate, if that be necessary, in order to arrive at the natural meaning of the words employed.
United States v. Shreveport Grain & Elevator Co., 287 U.S. 77, 82-83, 53 S.Ct. 42, 44, 77 L.Ed. 175 (1932) (citations omitted). While not taking issue with the majority’s citation to the Court of Appeals’ conclusion in Smith v. Commonwealth, Ky.App., 41 S.W.3d 458, 459-60 (2001), that its holding was in accord with an established rule of grammar, Smith, in fact, cited no authority for that proposition and I have found none in the limited time and resources available to me today, e.g., William C. Paxson, The New American Guide to Punctuation (Signet 1996); William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White, The Elements of Style (3d ed. McMillan 1979); and the six-hour time limit imposed for the completion of this opinion.
Nevertheless, if the General Assembly had intended the qualifying clause to apply to the contingency of disqualification, then it must also have intended it to apply to the contingency of death, and that interpretation would be absurd. A campaign committee cannot be formed until after the *408slate has complied with KRS 118.125 and KRS 118.127, ie., filed its candidacy papers. See KRS 121.170(1). While the candidacy papers must be filed no later than 4:00 p.m. on the last Tuesday in January preceding the applicable primary election, there is no deadline for forming a campaign committee. While it is possible, of course, that the death of a slate member could occur after the filing of the slate’s candidacy papers, I cannot envision a scenario where the slate’s campaign committee would be formed after the death of a slate member. Thus, there would be no reason for the General Assembly to condition the filling of a vacancy caused by death upon the death occurring after the formation of the slate’s campaign committee. And if the General Assembly did not intend for the qualifying clause to apply to the death contingency, there is no reason to conclude that it meant for that clause to apply to the disqualification contingency. Certainly, our policy of liberal construction of statutes in favor of a candidate’s qualifications, Greene v. Slusher, 800 Ky. 715, 190 S.W.2d 29, 82 (1945), alone precludes such a construction.
Thus, I conclude that (1) Bates was disqualified to hold the office of Lieutenant Governor when the Fletcher-Bates slate filed its candidacy papers on December 3, 2002; (2) the fact of his disqualification triggered the provisions of the “vacancy” statute, KRS 121A.080(11); and (3) Fletcher was entitled to fill the vacancy caused by the disqualification even though Bates’s disqualification occurred prior to the formation of the slate’s campaign committee.
Accordingly, I concur with the result reached in this case.
GRAVES, J., joins this opinion.

. Similarly, the Secretary of State's opinion, expressed in its March 31, 2003 memorandum to Fletcher, that the "disqualification” occurred when the Oldham Circuit Court issued its March 26, 2003, Order, is a mere opinion subject to legal challenge as Heleringer has done in this case. The Secretary of State is charged only with certifying that "a vacancy exists for a reason specified in this subsection.” KRS 121A.080(11). Thus, while the Secretary's finding that a vacancy exists by reason of disqualification is necessary to the operation of subsection 11, the added opinion as to "when” the disqualification occurred is mere surplusage. Therefore, unlike the majority, I attribute no significance to the Secretary’s opinion in determining this question of law.