24 Mont. 447 | Mont. | 1900
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Original application for injunction to restrain the defendant, as clerk of Granite county, from printing upon the official ballot a ticket designated as the ‘ ‘Bryan Democratic’ ’ ticket. Under an order to show cause, the defendant appeared and hied an answer admitting many of the allegations of the petition, but controverting others and setting up matters in avoidance. To this relators interposed a general demurrer, and upon the questions arising out of the facts thus admitted the parties rested.
These admitted facts are: The county Democratic convention under regular .call of the central committee, assembled at the
The defendant insists that the admitted facts present a case fairly within the principle of State ex rel. Gillis v. Johnson, 18 Mont. 556; and that, as no confusion can possibly arise from the presence of the ticket in question upon the ballot, the contention involved may well be left to the electors to decide. We are not inclined to extend the principle of this case to .circumstances not identical with those presented therein. The situation presented in that case was anomalous and we are inclined to doubt its correctness, in view of conclusions reached in other cases decided at the present term (State ex rel. Clarke v. Moran, ante)\ but, whether correct or not, we do not think it applicable to the facts presented here. There the convention divided into two factions, and each acted without consulting the electors. In this case, the seceding faction, not content to act alone, proceeded to call to their aid representatives óf all others in the county who were of like mind. It is true the call apparently excluded from the convention called for October 2, the electors in those precincts which were represented by the seceding delegates, yet as a matter of fact primaries were held in all the precincts in the county, except six, and these were entitled to only seven delegates. All, save one of these, were represented by the delegates to the former convention. Applying a strictly technical rule we would be compelled to say that the convention was not a representative body; for in so far as any of the electors were excluded from representation under the call, the convention, to that extent, was not representative; but adopting a less technical view, and bearing in mind that it is often the case in these political meetings that persons who happen to be present from localities that are unrepresented, are permitted to take part, we are inclined to think the assemblage was a fairly representative one, and that the ticket named by it is entitled to a place on the ballot. To state the proposition in a different way, we are not so well satisfied that the meeting was not a representative one so that the ticket should be omitted from
Dismissed.