finding the Election Code’s provision that an elector may write in the name of a person not already on the ballot was directory; therefore, write-in votes for a person already on the ballot should be counted – particularly as the Election Code did not specify that such votes should not be counted
How later courts described this case
- finding the Election Code’s provision that an elector may write in the name of a person not already on the ballot was directory; therefore, write-in votes for a person already on the ballot should be counted – particularly as the Election Code did not specify that such votes should not be counted
- explaining that stare decisis has "special force" in matters of statutory, as opposed to constitutional, construction (quoting Patterson v. McLean Credit Union, 491 U.S. 164, 172-73, 109 S.Ct. 2363, 2370, 105 L.Ed.2d 132 (1989))
- construing requirement of Section 1112-A(b) of Election Code, added by the Act of July 11, 1980, P.L. 600, 25 P.S. § 3031.12(b) (regarding write-in votes), consistent with precedent, as directory, not mandatory, in the aftermath of an election, and observing that “the matter of distinguishing between certain mandatory and directory provisions of election laws is a sufficiently subjective undertaking”
- declining to invalidate a write-in vote cast for a candidate who was named on the ballot proper, observing that ballots containing mere minor irregularities should only be stricken for compelling reasons
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
Justice EAKIN,
Dissenting.
The majority has taken the plain, lucid, unambiguous phrase “the name of any person not already printed on the ballot” and used “liberal interpretation” to make it mean “the name of any person whether already printed on the ballot or not.” This is not liberal interpretation; it is judicial alchemy to which I cannot subscribe.
Legislative phrases that are clear should not give rise to judicial reinterpretation, much less the pursuit of the phantasm of legislative intent. When the legislature speaks clearly, as here, it matters not what a court wishes to divine as their collective intent, whether in pursuit of a sympathetic result or not. It is an invasion of the legislative prerogative to transmogrify clear and unambiguous words into an opposite result.