Court Opinion

ID: 9750139
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 14:23:10.188227+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:26:03.329581
License: Public Domain

Joslin, J.,
dissenting. The key to this case is how G. L. 1956 (1969 Reenactment) §17-14-11 should be read. It is the only guideline to validation found in the election laws, and it directs the local canvassing authority “* * * to check all signatures, on each nomination paper, filed with it against the voting list as last canvassed or published according to law.” (Emphasis supplied.) While it tells the canvassers what to check, it does not tell them how to check, and it is on the how that the majority and I disagree.
The majority, relying on Attorney-General v. Clarke, 26 R. I. 470, 59 A. 395 (1904), construe the §17-14-11 directive as requiring a letter-for-letter, initial-for-initial, abbreviation-for-abbreviation conformity between a voter’s signature on a nomination paper and his name on the voting list. I would not be troubled by their construction if the voting list — the focal point of the entire validation process — had not been substantially altered from what it was when Clarke was decided. Then it was nothing more than a printed, typewritten or otherwise mechanically reproduced alphabetical list of the names and addresses of those eligible to vote. Today, it consists of original permanent registration cards signed by voters upon registration, and filed, together with the signed cards of other registrants residing in the same voting district, alphabetically or by street address, in permanent locked binders. G. L. 1956 (1969 Reenactment) § 17-1-2 (m).
The basic change in the character of the voting list occurred in 1958 when the Legislature completely revised our *37election laws, P. L. 1958, chap. 18, sec. 1, now G. L. 1956 (1969 Reenactment) title 17. Hardly a section of the law was left untouched. The most significant revision was the adoption of a system of signature identification “as the only reasonably reliable method of identifying a voter.” Report of the Election Laws Study Commission of the State of Rhode Island (1957) at 22.1
The signature identification system presupposes that a person’s right to participate in the election process will hinge upon his being identified by a comparison of signatures. At the polls, for example, the statute provides that the right to vote, in the usual case, will depend upon whether a voter’s signature on his application identifies him as the same person whose signature appears on the original permanent registration card. G. L. 1956 (1969 Reenactment) §17-19-24. This procedure bears little resemblance to that in effect prior to the adoption of signature identification. Then, a person’s right to vote turned on whether the name and address he announced to the warden when he offered to vote could be found on the printed list of names and addresses. If it appeared, he was allowed to deposit his ballot; if he was missing, whatever the cause for the omission, permission was denied. In Re The Polling Lists, 13 R. I. 729.
The concern that a voter identify himself, however, does not depend upon whether the offer to participate is at the polls or at the nomination stage of the election process. In either case, the interest to be protected is identical. It is to insure, by the best available method, that the person who offers to participate is the person he represents himself to be. The voting list is the only common point of refer*38ence provided by the election laws for determining whether he is that person. While the printed name on yesterday’s voting list was obviously an inadequate standard against which to check either identity at the polls or the validity of a signature on a nomination paper, the then election laws did not offer the option of a better alternative. That is no longer true. Today we have locked binders containing registration cards bearing the signatures of all qualified electors, and either at-the-polls identification or the authenticity of a signature on a nomination paper is readily ascertainable by reference to those cards. With the change in the voting list, the need as well as the reason for the rule of exact conformity vanished.
Under today’s law, the canvassers, when engaged in the validation process, have before them for visual examination two signatures: one on a nomination paper, the other on an original permanent registration card. Their purpose is to certify only authentic and valid signatures of qualified party electors,2 and §17-14-11 specifically proyides that “forged” signatures shall not be counted.3 It is unthinkable *39to me that in the course of their visual examination the canvassers should intentionally blind themselves to signature likenesses or differences and look at the two signatures for the limited purpose of ascertaining whether one is a letter-for-letter, initial-for-initial, abbreviation-for-abbreviation duplicate of the other. To thus restrict their examination is to permit the validation of a signature which conforms, but does not compare. This to me is an unacceptable anomaly.
Reason and reflection convince me that election machinery, which is keyed to voter identification based upon signature comparison, could not possibly contemplate that the canvassers should ignore the new standard when they pass upon the validity of a signature on a nomination paper. To accept, in these circumstances, the rule of exact conformity as the only standard for validation is to accept a rule which is based upon the fiction that a voter signing a nomination paper will presumptively sign his name letter-for-letter, initial-for-initial, abbreviation-for-abbreviation exactly as he may have signed it at sometime in the past. Acceptance also overlooks the reality that the same person might, for example, sign a registration card as “John James Jones” and years later sign a nomination paper as “John J. Jones.”4 While exact conformity may have been valid as a rule of expediency when the printed list of names and addresses was the only measuring stick against which *40the canvassing authority could check a signature on a nomination paper, it lost its viability when signature comparison became available as a precedent to voter participation, and when, as an integral part of the signature identification system, a voting list became a collection of specimen signatures.
I read §17-14-11 as a directive to the canvassing authority to verify voter identity by comparing the signatures on nomination papers with those on the registration cards. To read it otherwise is to disregard the rule of statutory construction which says that legislative intention is found by looking at the pertinent legislation in its entirety and by viewing it in the light of the purpose which motivated its enactment. Shulton, Inc. v. Apex, Inc., 103 R. I. 131, 134, 235 A.2d 88, 90. I am aware that G. L. 1956 (1969 Reenactment) §17-14-8 tells the voter who signs a nomination paper to * * sign in person with his name, place of residence and street number, if any, as it appears on the voting list * * I refuse, however, to read that provision as making disqualification the price for failure to comply literally. Such a reading completely ignores an election system which is based on signature identification, and which could, as in this case, result in the unnecessary invalidation of the authentic signatures of qualified party electors. I cannot believe that the Legislature intended so unreasonable a result and I, therefore, do not construe §17-14-8 as mandatory. Wilkinson v. Harrington, 104 R. I. 224, 243 A.2d 745; Genereux v. Pelosi, 96 R. I. 452, 192 A.2d 630; State v. Haggerty, 89 R. I. 158, 151 A.2d 382.
Here, Malinou’s nomination papers endorsed with more than 1,000 names came to the Board of Elections for certification. It certified 873 of the names thereon as those of qualified electors of the Democratic Party; rejected 124 because the endorsers had not subscribed their names on *41the nomination papers in the identical form and manner as they had signed their original permanent registration card; and invalidated 25 others because the endorsers had indicated on the nomination papers places of residence and/or street numbers differing from those appearing on their original permanent registration cards.5 The Board of Elections admits that the signatures invalidated are those of qualified electors of the Democratic Party and, after comparing them with the signatures on the original permanent registration cards, does not dispute either their validity or authenticity. Notwithstanding, it applied the rule of exact conformity and refused to validate. In my judgment this was error. Those 149 endorsements should have been certified. Malinou’s papers would then carry the signatures of more than enough qualified electors of the Democratic Party to entitle him to listing as a candidate for that Party’s nomination for the office of United States Senator.
Martin S. Malinou, petitioner, pro se.
Moore, Virgadamo, Boyle & Lynch, Salvatore L. Virgadamo, Francis J. Boyle, Laurent L. Rousseau; Maurice W. Hendel, Stephen F. Achille, John Quattrocchi, Jr., Herbert F. DeSimone, Attorney General, W. Slater Allen, Assistant Attorney General, for respondents.

The Commission was constituted by Resolution No. H. 1036, Substitute A, January Session, 1957, and was charged with the power and duty “of studying, revising and codifying all of the election laws of the State of Rhode Island.”

The original permanent registration card, in addition to containing a voter’s signature and address, makes provisions for recording the fact I hat he may have voted at an election or signed caucus, primary or final nomination papers. G. L. 1956 (1969 Reenactment) §17-9-6. And as a part of the validation process, the canvassers look to the cards, not only to verify signatures, but also to ascertain whether a signature on a nomination paper shall be disqualified by reason of the voter’s having within 26 months voted in a primary election as a member of any other political party, or signed final nomination papers of any candidate for any elective office, or signed primary nomination papers for candidates of any other political party. G. L. 1956 (1969 Reenactment) §17-15-24.

In pertinent part §17-14-11 reads:
'!* *. * any candidate or the chairman of any party committee questions the validity or authenticity of any signature on such nomination paper, the local board shall forthwith and summarily decide the question, and for this purpose, shall have the same powers as are -conferred upon the board by the provisions of §17-14-14, if any signature is-found to be invalid, for any reason in law, or forged, then such-signature shall not be counted.” (Emphasis supplied.)

See Appendix of the majority opinion which lists a sampling of the kind of discrepancy between signatures which resulted in their being refused validation. In each of these instances, as in each of the remaining 149, Malinou in his petition for a writ of certiorari alleged that the signature on the voting list was that of the same person who signed his nomination papers. The Board of Elections does not dispute that allegation and it is, therefore, under the prevailing practice, accepted as true Morin v. Zoning Board of Review, 102 R. I. 457, 460, 232 A.2d 393, 394; Wyss v. Zoning Board of Review, 99 R. I. 562, 564, 209 A.2d 225, 226; Roberts v. Board of Elections, 85 R. I. 203, 207, 129 A.2d 330, 333.

Following the example of the majority I list a random, but somewhat representative, sampling of the differing addresses.

Address on voting list

68 Pekin
239 Jewett St.
305 Williams
89 Wesleyan Ave.
12 Armstrong
30 Douglass Avenue
49 Hillside Ave.

Address on nomination papers

21 Pekin
237 Jewett St.
229 Williams
79 Wesleyan
14 Armstrong
54 Goddard
12 Ogden St.