Court Opinion

ID: 9645349
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 21:22:19.487172+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:27.898361
License: Public Domain

WILNER, Judge,
dissenting.
The Court today holds that it is permissible for election officials to deny a properly registered voter the right to vote so long as they do so negligently and not fraudulently or arbitrarily. With respect, I dissent from that conclusion.
There is no need in this dissent to write a political treatise on the importance of the right to vote. I am sure that my colleagues agree with me that it is the fundamental underpinning of our democratic and republican form of government and must be zealously protected. It was not protected in this case. Brenda Smith, a properly registered voter was denied her *688right to vote in the election for mayor and members of the city council of Seat Pleasant, Maryland.1 She did all that she could do to exercise that right, and it was only through the inexcusable negligence of city and county election officials that she was not permitted to cast her ballot.
Had Mr. Kennedy, the declared winner in the mayoral race, won by more than one vote, I would agree that no judicial action would be appropriate, for Ms. Smith’s vote would not have changed the result of the election. Here, however, Ms. Smith’s vote may well have changed the result of the election; if her uncontested affidavit is accepted, it would have changed the result and forced a run-off election.
The Court accepts that mandamus lies to compel public officers “to perform their functions, or some particular duty imposed upon them, which in its nature is imperative, and to the performance of which the party applying for the writ has a clear legal right,” at least in the absence of “any ordinary adequate legal remedy to which the party applying could have recourse,” if “the court is satisfied that it is necessary to secure the ends of justice, or to subserve some just or useful purpose.” Opinion at 672-73 (quoting from George’s Creek Coal & Iron Co. v. County Comm’rs of Allegany Co., 59 Md. 255, 259 (1883) and from Goodwich v. Nolan, 343 Md. 130, 680 A.2d 1040 (1996)). It follows, however, the precepts, also included in the language from earlier cases, that mandamus ordinarily does not lie when the action to be reviewed “is discretionary or depends on personal judgment,” Goodwich, supra, 343 Md. at 145, 680 A.2d at 1047, at least in the absence of “an allegation that the action complained of was illegal, arbitrary, capricious, or unreasonable,” id. at 146, 680 A.2d at 1048, and that the action of election officials “in counting or rejecting ballots, is not subject to review by mandamus in the *689absence of conduct that is fraudulent, arbitrary or in violation of law.” Ante at 675.
There is a dual problem with that approach, as applied in this case. First, the action complained of here was not one that involved discretion or personal judgment. Election officials do not have discretion to deny a properly registered voter the right to vote. That is not a matter of “personal judgment.” Second, this was not a matter of counting or rejecting a ballot, which was the issue in the cases relied upon by the court. Here, there was no ballot to be counted or rejected, because Ms. Smith was not allowed to cast one. McNulty v. Board of Elections, 245 Md. 1, 224 A.2d 844 (1966) and Fowler v. Board of Elections, 259 Md. 615, 270 A.2d 660 (1970), cert. denied, 400 U.S. 1024, 91 S.Ct. 583, 27 L.Ed.2d 637 (1971), make this distinction quite well.
In McNulty, the election officials neglected to lock the levers over blank spaces on some of the voting machines, thereby allowing voters to pull those levers. One of those blank spaces was on the bottom line. McNulty, a candidate who had urged voters to “vote the bottom line,” filed an action for mandamus to require the election officials to count the votes on that bottom line as votes for him. We affirmed the dismissal of the petition, holding that the administrative error in not locking the levers did not justify calling a new election “the reason being, that no voter was actually prevented from voting for the candidate of his choice, if he followed the official election instructions published in the newspaper prior to the election, the directives on the specimen ballots also published, and the instructions of the Attorney General prominently posted in the polling places, and indeed, if they had followed the instructions on McNulty’s own sample ballot.” McNulty, supra, at 9, 224 A.2d at 848-49 (emphasis added).
Fowler also involved a problem with voting machines, leading a losing candidate to seek a new election through an action for mandamus. Although in the absence of a claim that the irregularities would have changed the result, we expressed *690doubt as to Ms. Fowler’s standing to seek that relief, we affirmed dismissal of the petition on the merits, holding:
“[The trial judge] concluded, correctly we think, that under the rationale and holding of McNulty v. Board of Elections, 245 Md. 1, 224 A.2d 844, and cases therein cited, the decisive question was ‘whether or not eligible voters who sought to cast a vote * * * were deprived of votes and whether or not, had they voted, this vote would have changed the outcome of the election.’ His findings of fact, the accuracy of which is not really challenged, were that there was no showing that any specific individual had been deprived of his franchise and therefore no showing that the irregularities affected the result of any election contest.”
Fowler, supra, 259 Md. at 618-19, 270 A.2d at 662 (emphasis added).
The caveat specifically mentioned in McNulty and Fowler is precisely the situation now before us. Not only was a citizen’s right to vote actually denied, but the vote that she claims she would have cast would, in fact, have changed the result of the election. Those cases, as I read them, require some judicial remedy.
It should be of no consequence that, in a situation such as this, the problem arose from negligence rather than from fraud or that the negligence was somewhat diffuse — the product of carelessness on the part of several election officials. The effect is the same. The county election officials were careless in the manner in which they programmed their computer, causing it to disenfranchise a person for simply discharging her legal duty of notifying the board of a change of address. Having so misprogrammed the computer, they were careless in not checking the registration list they sent to the Seat Pleasant officials against any recent changes of address. Knowing that there was an election in Seat Pleasant and that the polls would be open until 8:00 p.m., they were careless in not making arrangements to have someone available to deal with any problems that might arise and that they would have the authority to resolve. The city officials were *691careless in not checking to make sure that an appropriate county official would remain available during the hours that the polls were open and, perhaps, in not making better efforts to contact a county official when the problem with Ms. Smith arose. This was not simply a minor administrative “goof.” It was a series of negligent acts or omissions on the part of responsible officials that, in combination, was almost certain to produce the kind of problem that actually arose.
The Court sweeps by all of that and holds that, in the absence of fraud or arbitrariness, there is no remedy. What if, through pure negligence, the computer had de-registered all Democrats, or all Republicans, or all people in a given precinct, or all people whose last name begins with the letter “S”? Would the Court still say, “No fraud, no remedy”?
I recognize that no election is run perfectly and that “glitches” occur despite the best intentions of the election officials, and I agree that the results of an election should not be set aside for inconsequential reasons. I accept the pronouncements from our earlier cases to that effect. This, however, is a different case-one that was foreseen in McNulty and Fowler — -and it needs to be treated accordingly. I believe that the Circuit Court correctly applied the law and entered an appropriate order, and I would therefore affirm its judgment.

. That the election was a local, municipal one does not, of course diminish its significance. The laws enacted and policies pursued by town and county governments often have a greater and more immediate effect on people’s lives, fortunes, health, and welfare than laws enacted by Congress or policies pursued by the President.