Court Opinion

ID: 9694837
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 17:56:35.784015+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:05.460677
License: Public Domain

*378Concurring Opinion by
Mr. Justice Musmanno:
Harry W. Fowler, County Commissioner of Allegheny County, died on October 24, 1955, after having been nominated May 17,1955, on the Democratic ticket, to succeed himself in that office. The Pennsylvania Election Code provides that where death creates a vacancy in a party nomination, the party, through its appropriate committee, may choose a substitute nominee. On October 26, 1955, the Democratic Party, under prescribed party rules, made the nomination, selecting Howard B. Stewart to take Fowler’s place.
On October 27th Howard B. Stewart requested the Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County to direct the Allegheny County Board of Elections to accept the substitute nomination certificate and provide the necessary machinery for the substitution of his name on the ballots.* At a hearing before President Judge Mc-Naugher and Judges O’Brien and Duep, the Director of the Department of Elections of Allegheny County, Will E. Alton, testified that the substitution of name could be made by means of a printed sticker. It was shown that this procedure had been followed in the 1947 elections when John J. Exler took the place of Anthony J. Gerard, Democratic nominee for Recorder of Deeds, who had died ten days prior to the election, and in 1943 when the name of Walter P. Smart displaced that of Judge Ralph H. Smith, who died following his nomination at the Democratic primary that year.
There was thus sufficient precedent to authorize the granting of Stewart’s request. One barrier appeared in the path of the allowance of the petition. Section 981(b) of the Election Code provides: “Substituted *379nomination certificates to fill vacancies caused by tbe death of candidates nominated at primaries or by nomination papers shall be filed at the proper office at any time prior to the day on which the printing of ballots is started.” Interpreted literally, this provision.would mean that the sticker substitution could not be accomplished because the printing of the ballots was already finished as of October 25, 1955, two days before the petition was filed. Eleven days, however, yet remained before election day, ample time within which to print the stickers and attach them to the ballots.
If the literal interpretation was to prevail, and the substitution by sticker was to be prohibited, a most anomalous and even grotesque situation would result. It would compel those who believed that the administration of the Allegheny County government should be entrusted to the Democratic Party to vote for one live man and one dead man — and this, in spite of the fact that a substitute live man was already standing by, qualified for the race in which the deceased Mr. Fowler had fallen. Was the law to be regarded so inadequate and incapable of reflection as to insist that the lifeless runner continue on the course?
Death is not a mere happenstance. It comes to all. It is only the date of its occurrence which is indefinite. A factor which must be considered in the planning of any project is the possibility that death may interfere with or interrupt the normal sequence of events. Thus, a president must have his vice-president, a governor his lieutenant governor, and every leading actor must train an understudy because Death is always waiting in the wings of the stage, ready to stalk out unannounced on the stage of reality. The cry of “The King is dead, Long live the King!” had reason and logic to support it, namely, that the sceptre of government was not to be buried in the coffin of him who held it last, *380but to be gripped at once by the new monarch, so that government would reign unimpeded and authority march on unbroken. In a democracy, this need for continuity of office is even more pronounced. It must, then, be taken for granted that when the Legislature addressed itself to the subject of death in the Election Code it intended to provide the machinery which would supply in all instances living candidates for dead candidates, when time permitted of the substitution.
It is to be noted that the Legislature did not prohibit the filing of substituted nomination certificates after the beginning of the ballot printing. If that had been its intention, it could quite easily have said so. In declaring that the substitution was to be made prior to the printing of the ballots, it was merely announcing a policy of convenience and prudence. It was perhaps assumed that a change in the names of candidates might necessitate a re-printing of the entire ballot, which, of course, would involve a considerable expenditure of time and money. The printing of a sticker, however, is entirely a different matter, one of comparatively small expense and easily accomplished within the scope of time ordinarily allotted to the job of the whole printing. Certainly the Legislature did not intend any provision of the Election Code to prevent the correction of a ballot, by sticker or otherwise, where a printing error might have occurred. And if there would be the right, which of course there would be, to correct a misspelling, a fortiori there would be the right and duty to make a change made necessary by the intervention of death.
The whole question in this case is whether the instruction in Section 981(b) of the Election Code was a mandate or a direction. In solving this question we are not left to logic alone, as formidable as such a pillar would be in upholding the conclusion which this *381Court now reaches. There is stare decisis to lend its powerful strength in sustaining the decision which logic and common sense dictate. In 1908 this Court said in the case of Coolbaugh v. Herman, 221 Pa. 496, 502: “When a statute directs certain proceedings to be done in a certain way, or at a certain time the law will be regarded as directory and the proceedings under it will be held valid, though the command of the statute as to form and time has not been strictly obeyed; the time and manner not being the essence of the thing required to be done.”* Was the time of what was to be done here “the essence of the thing required to be done”? I do not believe so, for otherwise the Legislature would not have left to the county commissioners, on a sliding schedule, the beginning of the printing any time between September 27th and October 21st.
The authors of the Election Code patently intended to make full provision for the contingency of death of candidates occurring between the primaries and the general elections. In McQuiston’s Adoption, 238 Pa. 304, 309, we said: “It is a settled rule that in the construction of statutes an interpretation is never to be adopted that would defeat the purpose of the enactment, if any other reasonable construction can be found which its language will fairly bear. If, therefore, it appears that by construing the language of the act in the particular referred to as mandatory, the purpose of the act would be so seriously impaired as to amount to a defeat in purpose; while, on the other hand, if construing it as simply directory its efficiency is preserved, the latter construction is to prevail.”
In Cowan’s Estate, 184 Pa. 339, which had to do with the time of filing certain claims against an estate, this Court said: “Q. . . . ‘There is an established prin*382ciple that where as here the thing to be done may well be done after as before the time prescribed, where it is a matter of manner, order or convenience, rather than of substance, the courts assume the legislative intent to have been merely directory: Dwarris on Statutes, 222.’ ”
In the Kohn Election Case, 351 Pa. 544, we said that statutory limitations “are not conclusive when good cause is shown.” The very purpose of election laws is to secure “freedom of choice and to prevent fraud and corruption; to obtain a fair election and an honest election return; to insure fair elections, or an equal chance and opportunity for everyone to express his choice at the polls; and to secure the rights of duly qualified electors and not to defeat them. The election laws should not be so interpreted as to defeat the very object of their enactment. Election laws are sui generis. Laws regulating the rights of an elector are merely directory.”*
Courts are established by the people to do justice. Although the rank and file of the population are unfamiliar with the technical aspects of jurisprudence, there are certain elementary principles of law which require no more explanation than the Ten Commandments. That candidates for office should be living persons is about as fundamental a proposition as could be stated in any primer on government. Since the representatives of the people in General Assembly have already built a bridge over which any political party may carry forward its program to fulfillment undeterred by death, it would be a folly incomprehensible to the people to hold that the absence of one rivet or bolt in that bridge should condemn it and prohibit the trifling repair.
*383To deny the people the opportunity to vote for living candidates where it is obviously possible to do so is not to uphold the Election Code but to make a mockery of it. “No statute regulating the conduct of elections should be so construed as to place arbitrary or unreasonable obstructions in the way of a citizen in the exercise of his right to vote.”*
The Statutory Construction Act of Pennsylvania (46 PS §501 et seq.) declares that one of the rules which must be followed in determining the intent of the Legislature is: “That the Legislature does not intend a result that is absurd, impossible of execution, or unreasonable”: Sec. 52 (1), 46 PS §552 (1).
It obviously requires very little reflection to come to the conclusion that to demand that the people vote on a dead candidate when a live person is available and qualified under the law is absurd and unreasonable.
The decision of the lower Court, affirmed by this Court, to authorize the substitution of the name of Howard B. Stewart for that of the late Harry W. Fowler, was not only reasonable but it had the additional laudatory effect of increasing a respect for the law and the courts, without which the robe would be but meaningless trappings and the courthouse only an object of architectural curiosity along the dusty highway of life.

I use “ballots” in the generic sense, including in the term voting machine labels as well.

 All italics, mine.

 Corpus Juris Secundum, Vol. 29, §7, p. 27.

 Corpus Juris Secundum, Vol. 29, §191, p. 277.