# Shambach v. Bickhart

> Supreme Court of Pennsylvania · March 26, 2004 · 577 Pa. 384

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9692238

## Case

- **Full name:** Gregory L. SHAMBACH, Petitioner/Appellant, v. Richard W. BICKHART, Respondent/Appellee. in Re Pennsylvania General Election for Snyder County Commissioner, November 4, 2003. Appeal of Gregory L. Shambach of Recount and Certification of Election Returns
- **Court:** Supreme Court of Pennsylvania
- **Decided:** March 26, 2004
- **Citations:** 577 Pa. 384; 845 A.2d 793; 2004 Pa. LEXIS 659
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Dissent by Eakin
- **Judges:** Cappy, Castille, Nigro, Newman, Saylor, Eakin, Baer
- **Cited by:** 34 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9692238

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- 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 s…
- 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))
- 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

## Opinion text

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.

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9692238. Public record. Not legal advice.