§ 163-87. Challenges allowed on day of primary or election.

Case Name: States’ Rights Democratic Party v. State Bd. of Elections

Citation: 49 S.E.2d 379

Year: 1948

Case PDF: States’ Rights Democratic Party v. North Carolina State Board of Elections

Case Summary: Law governing creation of new political parties is subject to restrictions that such rules must not conflict with any provisions of existing statutory law, even if such restriction is not specifically annexed by statute, as the constitution forbids the legislature to delegate power to make law to any other body. Specifically, the notice of and opportunity to petition for the creation of a new political party are necessary to meet the constitutional requirement of "due process of law." Here the State Board of Elections regulations, which require voters in support of a new political party to file an attachment which disclose the requisite number of signed supporters who have not voted in primary election(s) of any exiting party during the year in which the new political party petition is signed cannot be sustained merely as an administrative effectiveness measure on behalf of the State Board. The State Board of Elections has the authority to determine the registration for creation of a new political party by examination of registration books through the collection of the county boards as a matter of administrative routine before calling on signers to prove signature of the requisite number of qualified voters. However, the Supreme Court cannot determine whether primary election laws impose on qualified voters a moral obligation to such party and to therefore refrain from signing statutory petition for the creation of a its new political party during the year in which such elections are held. Thus, the statute providing for the creation of new political parties confers a legal right on any qualified voted the sight to sign such petition, irrespective of whether he/she has participated in the primary election of such existing political party during the same year in which the petition was signed. [Judicial Action] Where a petition for the creation of a new political party shows to have been signed by at least 10,000 voters and otherwise mets every statutory requirement, the Superior Court shall grant a writ of mandamus ordering the State Board of Elections to cause names of new party's nominees for President and Vice-President on the official ballot in the general election.

Case Name: Lloyd v. Babb

Citation: 251 S.E.2d 843

Year: 1979

Case PDF: LloydvBabb

Case Summary: The classification between potential voters as residents entitled to vote and nonresidents not entitled to vote shall be upheld if such classifications are reasonable and not subject to a compelling state interest. However, state laws which have the effect of denying certain classes the right to vote must be supported of a compelling justification. Moreover, it would not be a denial of equal protection to make certain inquiries of students who sought to register to vote as to their respective residency which were not made of other would-be registrants. Although there is no denial of equal protection under the use of the presumption that a student who leaves his parents’ home to go to college is not domiciled in the place where the college is located for voting purposes. Students seeking registration in the local of which they went to college may be asked specific questions about their financial affairs, such as whether they had an automobile, and where their banking and business connections lay as these would not implicate voting classifications on the basis of wealth or property ownership. It was not an unjustifiable intrusion into the private affairs of students when compelling them to answer certain questions concerning their residency. Furthermore, a student who merely intends to remain at his place of schooling only until graduation is not demonstrative to their domicile for voting purposes; so long as the student intends to make his home in the community where he is physically present and has no intent to return to his former home upon graduation, he may claim the college community as his domicile for voting purposes. Additionally, registrars may use questionnaires to obtain necessary facts to determine whether a student is entitled to vote in a particular locality is permissible. In determining whether such person is a bona fide resident for voting purposes, the State has demonstrative authority and may issue domicile (or "residence") test which exclude only those necessary to preserve the basic conception of a political community. However, a voter residing in a town only three months before an election, whose name was registered by one of the candidates, is not a qualified elector. The qualifications of "domicile" for voting purposes are legal capacity, physical presence, the intent to acquire domicile which requires both an intent to abandon one's prior domicile and an intent to remain at the new domicile, and the acquisition of a new domicile which may be shown both by declarations of the registrant and by objective facts which may be obtained via inquiries directed to the registrant by the registrar. If evidence adduced at trial showed members and officials of the county board had failed to require students seeking registration to prove their domicile, a court could enjoin the board from further registering students without doing so.  The courts possesses the power to order count boards to use a specific set of questions in relation to student voter registration as it relates to their domicile. However, judicial purging of voter registrants was not an available remedy in a mandamus proceeding as it would be duplicative of the statutory process for challenging voters (challenging persons were not entitled to a judicial remedy identical to the administrative remedy). But an action of the State Board of Elections in determining voter registration does not arise from a "contested case" and therefore provides no basis for judicial review.