74 Md. 242 | Md. | 1891
delivered the opinion of the Court.
By section 128, of Article 33 of the Code of Public General Laws, as enacted by chapter 538, of the Acts of the General Assembly of 1890, all ballots, to he used and cast at any election in the State, are to he printed and furnished at public expense; and upon these ballots are
The appellees answered, denying the right of the petitioners to have Mr. Stabler’s name printed elsewhere on the ballot than in the Republican group. The Court agreed with the'appellees, and overruled the petitioners’ demurrer to the defendant’s answer, and refused the
(1.) If two or more political parties or bodies of citizens, calling themselves by a party name, nominate, either by conventions, primary elections, or nomination papers, the same man as a candidate for the same office, has each of the parties who nominated him the right to have his name printed on the official ballots under the name of such party and its emblem, if it has selected one?
(2.) If the same man is nominated by a political partjq and by a nomination paper in which no party name is set forth, have the persons signing the nomination papers the right to have the name of their candidate printed on the official ballot in another place than under the party name and emblem of the political party by which such candidate was then nominated? The questions thus raised depend upon the proper construction of section 131, of Article 33 as enacted by the Act of 1890, chapter 538, already mentioned, in conjunction with sections 129 and 130. Section 129 provides that any convention as hereinafter defined, held for the purpose of making nominations to public office, and also registered voters, to the number hereinafter specified, may nominate candidates for public offices to be filled by election within the State, or any parts thereof. A convention is then defined; and it is also declared in that section that nominations may then be made by means of primary elections without the intervention of any convention. A convention under this section must represent an organized body which polled at the last general election at least one per cent, of the entire vote cast in the State, county, ward, or other division for which the nomination is made.,
Section 130 provides how a nomination by a convention, or by a primary election shall be certified, and for the addition of a party emblem, and what that may be.
The appellees contend that the application of the appellants was unreasonable, and asked that which the law did not provide for, and which, in their jxxdgment, might lead to great inconvenience, and result in a candidate’s name being ixidefinitely repeated in sundry columns, which they contend might greatly enlarge the size of the ballots to be used for votixxg. They insist that the law does not in express terms entitle a party nominated independently, who may also have been xrominated by a political party, to appear but once on the ballot, and that place they decided in this case should be under the party name and emblem. They also say that there is no reasonable implication of sxxch right. A majority of this Court, however, is of opinion, that a reasonable construction of the law does, by implication, entitle such candidate when nominated independently by the requisite number of voters, to a place on the ticket in a place other than in the groxip of candidates of the political party which may also have nominated him.
The law does not design to make a party nomination and emblem superior in weight or respectability to the
- Order reversed.