123 Iowa 471 | Iowa | 1904
The statutes ^vith reference to the relocation of county seats provide, in substance, that “whenever citizens desire a relocation of the county seat they may petition the board of supervisors, at the regular June session, but not oftener than once in five years. The petition shall designate the place where the petitioners desire to have the county seat relocated, and shall be signed by none but legal voters of the county. It shall contain .in addition to the names of the petitioners, the section, township, and range on which, or •
The facts are not seriously in dispute. The total number of legal voters in Worth county at the time material to our inquiry was 2,568. A petition purporting to contain 1,623 names was presented to the board of supervisors of Worth county at a meeting held by that body in dune of the year 1902. At the same time a remonstrance bearing 1,532 names was also presented. Of the names on the remonstrance, 850 were signed after the circulation of the petition began, but before it was filed; and of those who signed the petition, 370 signed the remonstrance. At the hearing before the board, 175 voters who had signed both the petition and the remonstrance presented affidavits asking that their names be withdrawn from the remonstrance, and 34 who had signed the remonstrance alone, also made the same request. Of 141 who presented affidavits, 85 had signed the remonstrance before' the petition was filed. Three names of aliens were stricken from the petition by the board, and 160 more were stricken therefrom by reason of their having signed the remonstrance. The board also struck from the remonstrance the 850 names which were signed thereto before the petition was filed, and found that the petition was signed by more than a majority of the legal voters in the county. The trial court annulled this action, and held that the 850 names should have been counted on the remonstrance; that there was no authority for the withdrawal of names from the remonstrance, and that there were but 1,250 names on the petition which should be counted, while on the'remonstrance there were 1,526; and that, as the petition contained less than one-half of the legal voters in the county, the action of the board in ordering the matter submitted to the electors was illegal and void.
The first question has already been answered adversely to appellants in Loomis v. Bailey, 45 Iowa, 400; Jamison v. The Board, 47 Iowa, 388; Herrick v. Carpenter, 54 Iowa, 340; Luce v. Fensler, 85 Iowa, 596. Claim is made that these cases are unsound in principle, and contrary to the weight of authority, and that we have already departed from the rules therein announced in Greene v. Smith, 111 Iowa, 183. There has been no departure. Greene v. Smith clearly distinguishes the cases already cited, and expressly leaves them authoritative. The matter is wholly statutory, and, as the Legislature has seen fit to accept our interpretation of its language as being correct, ever since Loomis v. Bailey was decided, we are not now disposed to change the rule announced in that case and in the subsequent ones already cited. They so fully cover the exact question here presented, that it is useless to again go over the ground.
The judgment of the district court seems to be correct, and it is aeeirmed.