ELECTION. Choice; selection. The se lection of one person from a specified class to discharge certain duties in a state, cor poration, or society.
The word, in its ordinary signification, carries the idea of a vote, and canaot be held the synonym of any other mode of filling a position ; State v. Irwin, 5 Nev. 111. See People v. Molitor, 23 Mich. 341; APPOINTMENT. Election has often been construed to mean the act of casting and receiving the ballots,— the actual time of voting, not the date of the certifi cate of election. State v. Tucker, 64 Ala. 205. Both houses of congress, and parliamentary bodies in general, claim to be the sole judges of the elec tion of their own members. This right seems to be derived from the declaration of rights, delivered by the commons to the king in 1604. Brown, Law Diet. In the United States this power is vested In con gress and the state legislatures by the federal and state constitutions, and chancellor Kent considers that "there is no other body known to the constitu tion to which such power might safely be trusted. It la requisite to preserve a pure and genuine rep resentation, and to control the evils of irregular, corrupt, and tumultuoua electiona ; and as each house acts in these cases in a judicial character, its decisions, like the, decisions of any other court of justice,, ought to be regulated by known principles of law, and atrictly adhered to for the sake of uni formity and certainty ;" 1 Com. 235. On the other hand, experience of the temptation to defeated mem hers, which makes contests, in reliance (unfortu nately too often well-founded) upon the irresponsi bility of party majorities, leads Mr. Justice Miller to remark that: This provision . . . seems, from the experience of the past, to have been one of those principles adopted from the English house of com mons which has not worked well with our institu tions, and which the house of commons itself has been obliged to abandon. Contested elections are now, by the law of England, tried before the judi ciary, and the judgment of the court is conclusive upon the subject. It is conceded on all bands that justice is in this way more nearly administered with accuracy than it was under the former system. Both in that country and in this, under the former method, the result of a contested election has been very generally forecast by a knowledge of the rela tions of the parties contesting to the political ma jority or minority of the house in which the contest is carried on. As this is a constitutional provision, however, there exists no power in the legislature, without an amendment of that instrument, to refer these contested cases to the jUdiciary. The increas ing number of contested cases arising out of frauds• supposed to be perpetrated at the elec tions themselves, the investigation of which is al ways difficult, and the uncertainty of a fair and impartial decision . . . render it doubtful wheth er the entire provision on this subject is of any value." Miller, Const. 193.
Much may be said in support of the views of each of these learned commentators, and there is a pos sible middle ground practicable under existing con stitutional conditions, which might be suggested. That would be to provide for a judicial determina tion of the contest in the first instance, reserving to the legislative body the final decision only on ex ception or appeal under such limitations as would preserve and emphasize the judicial character of the proceeding. This would, on the one hand, pre serve the absolute independence of the legislature as one of three co-ordinate branches of the govern ment,—a basic principle, it may be remarked, of American and not of English governmental policy,— and at the same time add to the difficulty and prob ably lessen the frequency of partisan decisions, contrived in the comparative secrecy of committee rooms and consummated by the mere brute force of a majority.
' Election of Public Officers. The right to vote is not a natural one but is derived from constitutions and statutes ; it is not a lege protected by the Fourteenth ment ; Minor v. Happersett, • 21 Wall. 163, 22 L. Ed. 627. Each state determines for self the qualifications of its voters, and the United States adopts the state law upon the subject as the rule in federal elections in accordance with Section 2, article 1 of the Constitution of the United States, which pro vides that "the house of representatives shall be composed of members chosen every sec ond year by the people of the several states, and the electors in each state shall have the qualifications required for electors of the most numerous branch of the state legisla ture." The power of the state governments, how ever, to prescribe the qualifications 'of elec tors is limited by the Fifteenth Amendment of the Constitution which provides "that the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied' or abridged by the Unit ed States or by any state, on account of race, color, or previous conditioia of tude." This provision renders void all .pro visions of a state constitution or a state law which come in conflict with it or with any act of congress passed to enforce it; Mc Crary, Elections 2; Ex parte Yarbrough, 110 U. S. 663, 4 Sup. Ct. 152, 28 L. Ed. 274. In the territories the right to vote is regulated by congress.
The right to vote, if once given by a state constitution, cannot be impaired or taken away by legislation. But the legislature can regulate the right to vote in a reasonable way by prescribing questions to be propound ed to voters to test their qualifications; State v. Lean, 9 Wis. 279; or by requiring them to swear to support the Constitution of the United States, or by requiring regis tration. But regulations must not in any way impair the right to vote, and hence it has been held that an act prohibiting from voting those who, having been drafted into the military service and duly notified, had failed to report for duty, was void; McCaf ferty v. Guyer, 59 Pa. 109. An act requiring the voter to declare under oath that he is ' not guilty of any crime and has not volun tarily borne arms against the United States has also been held void; Rison v. Farr, 24 Ark. 161, 87 Am. Dec. 52. But see Randolph v. Good, 3 W. Va. 551. The right to vote can, however, be limited to male citizens or extended to females, but only upon the same terms and conditions as are applied to males; U. S. v. Anthony, 11 Blatch. 200, Fed. Cas. No. 14,459; Minor v. Happersett, 53 Mo. 58; Wheeler v. Brady, 15 Kan. 26; Lyman v. Martin, 2 Utah, 136. Different qualifica tions for persons to vote upon the question of licensing the sale of intoxicating liquors, from those prescribed in a state constitution for electors of public officers, may be pre scribed by a legislative act; Willis v. Kalm bach, 109 Va. 475, 64 S. E. 342, 21 L. R. A. (N. S.) 1009 ; but the legislature may not prescribe additional qualifications for voters to those fixed in the constitution; Johnson v. Grand Forks County, 16 N. D. 363, 113 N. W. 1071, 125 Am. St. Rep. 662.
The qualifications of voters in the different states are usually citizenship, residence for a given period, age (21 years), sometimes payment of taxes, ownership of land, and education, and 'mental capacity. See GRAND