Court Opinion

ID: 9854510
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 06:08:28.498374+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:23:07.694858
License: Public Domain

Weltner, Justice,
dissenting.
The majority opinion invalidates a recall proceeding on the basis of errors attributable, not to eligible voters who signed recall petitions, but to persons who circulated the petitions.
More than twenty years ago, Judge Eberhardt described the general principle that there is a distinction between the errors of officers conducting elections and errors of the voters themselves; in the former case, since the voter has no power over the officer, the officer’s blunder will not disfranchise the voter — unless it is mandatory under the law, whereas the voter may by his own neglect disfranchise himself.
Blackburn v. Hall, 115 Ga. App. 235, 240 (154 SE2d 392) (1967). In the past, this court has taken equally as strong a stand against disfranchisement by reason of administrative error. In our case of Malone v. Tison, 248 Ga. 209 (282 SE2d 84) (1981), we acknowledged and extended the rule in Blackburn. “Blackburn involved irregularities in voting; here we deal with irregular registrations, and the law is, if anything, even clearer.” 248 Ga. at 214.
The same reasoning would require, I suggest, that this valuable rule be extended to protect voters who properly and lawfully have signed recall petitions. Under any view of the evidence, there was a sufficiency of signatures that unquestionably were valid. Because a few other signatures failed to comply with the statutory procedure, we ought not to vitiate the entire recall election.