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'Y6
CITIZENSHIP AND SUFFRAGE IN MARYLAND.
and again escape striking off for want of time, or did the Legislature
intend
the whole list to be purified by the Courts, if the registers failed in
thNir
duty? We thinly there can be but one answer to this question." So the
court most justly allowed such appeals, once duly made, to be folly tried,
no
matter how long it might take.
Within three days after each sitting, alphabetical lists' of those added
and stricken off the registration books are to be posted in twenty places
in each precinct or district.
The provisions of this law- were thus expounded by the Court of Ap-
peals.z An officer of registration in Baltimore City was indicted for unlaw-
fully making and publishing a list, which purported to comprise the names
of those persons whom he had stricken from the registries of voters, which
list unlawfully comprised, beside the names stricken from said registry, the
names of voters not stricken from the registry, as the list falsely stated,
and
as the register well knew. By previous decision of the court, the registers
had been declared judicial officers, and the proceeding of registration a
quasi-judicial one.' The defense, therefore, claimed that the indictment
should have averred that he did the alleged wrongful act willfully, and ob-
jected that names of the voters were not given in the indictment. The court
decided that, knowingly making and publishing such a false and misleading
list was an offense under the law, and that the indictment, being for an of-
fense created by statute, was -sufficient, if it followed the language of
the
statute, and needed not to specify the names of the voters alleged to have
been published as stricken from registry. Specifying names is only neces-
sary when each name makes a separate offense. Here there is belt one of-
fense-the making a false list. The duties of making this list are not.
judicial, but ministerial, there being no exercise of judgment in making the
list. . It had not been left to the register's discretion, whether the list
be
made. The learned Judge Miller, in pronouncing the opinion of the court,
said:' " The statute, dealing as it does with the right of suffrage, is of
the ut-
most importance to all the citizens of the State. One of the great-objects
to
be obtained, as -well by the framers of the Constitution as by the
Legislature,
manifestly, wa.s the securing of fair and honest elections by means of a
system of registration of voters. * # it is easy to perceive 10«• the publi-
cation of such a lists throughout the ward, jest prior to an election, may
have operated to deter voters, who may have seen their manes among those
thus stricken off, from going to the polls, or, at least., have hindered
them in
the free exercise of their right of suffrage."
(1) Act of 189':, ch. DC%V.
(2) Ttincher vs. State, 66 ltd. Repts.,127.
(3) State vs. Bixler, fit :ltd. Repts, 354.
(4) fib 'Md. Repts., p. ?32.
(5) The Court of Appeals, in the case of Ryninger vs. Keating (fi0 Md.
334), decided that registration officers get 34
her diem not only for the time occupied in registering names, but also for
the time occupied in making and publishing
in handbill form the names of those registered, provided such work does not
exceed five days (changed to three by Act of
1892, ch. DCSV.) Unless the registers do this task their work would leave
"inchoate, all that had been already accom-
plished, rendered abortive," and the efforts to obtain the important object
"contemplated by the law, completely
frustrated."
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