Cramer's Election Case

Citations

• 248 Pa. 208
• 93 A. 937
• 1915 Pa. LEXIS 547

Syllabus

<p>Elections — Election booths — Arrangement — Agt- of June 10, 189S, Sec. 19, P. L. 419 — Violation—Invalidity of election — Certiorari — Practice, Supreme Court.</p> <p>1. Where a legislative provision is accompanied by a penalty for failure to observe it, the provision is mandatory.</p> <p>2. The provisions of the Act of June 10j 1893, Sec. 19, P. L. 419, relating to the arrangement of the rooms in which elections are held are mandatory and where they have been disregarded without excuse or justification, the ballots cast will be void and the returns from wards wherein such violations occurred cannot properly be reckoned in the general count.</p> <p>3. Where in a contested election case it appeared from the findings of the lower court that in violation of the Act of June 10, 1893, Sec. 19, P. L. 419, two separate rooms were employed for holding the election, one of which was occupied by the election board and in which the ballot box was placed, and the other contained the booths wherein the voters marked their ballots, that instead of a guard rail, a rope was employed which did not serve the purpose of excluding from the space reserved for voters all but the election board and persons actually engaged in voting, so that there w;as no restraint upon interference with voters who entered the booth, and that at the election certain votes cast for an office other than that contested had been purchased, the Court of Quarter Sessions erred in refusing to find that all the votes cast under such circumstances were invalid, although no actual fraud was shown as to the contested vote for the office in contest.</p> <p>4. While ordinarily on certiorari to the Supreme Court the power of the court is revisory and is restricted to the record, in election contests, which occupy a middle ground between common law and proceedings in equity, the opinion of the lower court, though not strictly a part of the record, is open to examination to discover the grounds of the court’s action.