Court Opinion

ID: 9769600
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 14:55:27.304037+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:38:27.755943
License: Public Domain

DOYLE, Justice,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent from the majority opinion ordering that the name of the relator, Harmon Hoot, be placed on the general election ballot as an independent candidate.
It is undisputed that the provisions of the Election Code with reference to the placing of the names of independent candidates upon the general election ballot are mandatory and must be strictly complied with. McWaters v. Tucker, 249 S.W.2d 80 (Tex.Civ.App.—Galveston 1952, no writ); Geiger v. DeBusk, 534 S.W.2d 437 (Tex.Civ.App.—Dallas 1976, no writ).
The respondent has raised several irregularity issues in connection with the relator’s application which warrant serious consideration. Two of such issues concern the sufficiency of addresses appearing on the application and the adequacy of the affidavit required by article 13.51. It is undisputed that if the challenged signers’ addresses and affidavits are not allowed to stand, the relator’s application would not have the required signatures.
The Election Code, article 13.50, Subdivision 5, provides in part, that “the application shall show each signer’s address, .... ” The Legislature has not defined “address” in the article. Therefore, we are required to give the word its meaning based on ordinary usage. The addresses under challenge in the case before us fail to include the city in which a number of the signers live. In Tyler v. Cook, 576 S.W.2d 769 (Tex.Sup.Ct.1980), the Texas Supreme *765Court did not rule on a similar address challenge, finding it unnecessary in order to decide the question before it. However, I can not conceive of an address as employed in the ordinary course of usage, as being complete and meaningful, that gives only a house number or post office box number, and omitting all reference to a city. The cases that have considered the address question under Article 13.08 of the Elec.Code, have uniformly held that the omission of the name of the city in a signer’s address is fatal to that name. Shields v. Upham, 597 S.W.2d 502 (Tex.Civ.App.—El Paso 1980, no writ); Gray v. Vance, 567 S.W.2d 16 (Tex.Civ.App.-Fort Worth 1978, no writ); Pierce v. Peters, 599 S.W.2d 849 (Tex.Civ.App.-San Antonio 1980, no writ). Under the rationale found in these cases, I fail to see how the address requirement would be interpreted differently for a signer under Article 13.50 than from one under Article 13.08. With or without the specificity as to address set out in Article 13.08(d), I think we are required to give the word “address” its ordinary meaning until the Legislature defines it.
As to a signer of an application under Article 13.50 of the Election Code making an affidavit to the effect that he has not “voted at either the general primary election or the runoff primary election of any party,” when the runoff primary election is yet to come, we are confronted with an impossible situation. No signer can make such an affidavit under the present wording of the statute. In Tyler v. Cook, supra, the dissent of Chief Justice Cadena, of the San Antonio Civil Appeals Court in 573 S.W.2d 567 at page 571, summarizes my position on the affidavit. He states:
Unless we attribute an almost complete lack of knowledge of grammar to our legislators, we cannot escape the conclusion that the statutory scheme requires that the signatures be gathered after the general primary election or the runoff primary election, as the case may be. It is utter foolishness to require a person to state that he has not participated in an event which is not to occur until some future date.
In reversing Tyler v. Cook, supra, Justice Barrow of the Texas Supreme Court reasoned similarly.
I would deny the mandamus and order the cause dismissed.