Miller v. Superior Court

THE COURT.

The petitioners were candidates at the August primary election of 1914 for nomination as candidates for the offices of county clerk and county treasurer, respectively, of the county of Kern. The board of supervisors of that county, having completed its canvass, has declared that

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petitioners have, respectively, received the highest number of votes cast for said offices. Contests are now pending in the superior court of said county, one against the nomination of petitioner I. L. Miller for the office of county clerk, and the other against petitioner Jerry Shields for the office of county treasurer. These contests, having been consolidated for the purposes of trial, are now being tried in said court.

No alternative writ has been issued, but the petitioners and the respondents arc before the court at the time of application for the writ; and by stipulation the court will make its order upon the record before it as upon a return to an alternative writ. The record produced consists of the petition for the writ and a transcript of certain evidence that has been taken in the hearing of said contests in the superior court.

On account of the urgency for immediate disposition of the matter, the court on October 8, 1914, in open court, made its order as herein stated. It appears that the actual canvassing of the primary election returns, other than the order of the board of supervisors declaring the result of the canvass, all occurred prior to the eighteenth day of September, 1914, and that the order of said board declaring the result of the canvass was made and entered on the eighteenth day of September. The affidavits of contest were not filed until the twenty-third day of September.

It further appears that in said affidavits of contest it was alleged by each contestant that a large number of alleged, voters within various precincts in the county of Kern were not permitted to vote and could not vote, because their names were not upon the register; neither were the original affidavits of registration or duplicates thereof at the time in the office of the county clerk of Kern County, where they are required by law to be; and that a large number of voters who had registered in accordance with law had a right to vote in their several precincts, but were denied the right to vote for the reasons above stated, and that said voters intended to and would have voted for the contestants if they had been permitted to cast their ballots in their respective precincts. It is further shown by petitioners that the superior court in the trial of said contests will permit said alleged disfranchised voters to testify that they registered as electors of said precincts according to law, notwithstanding the fact that their names were “not upon the Great Register” of the county, and