Mississippi Advisory Opinions September 14, 1983: 19830914 (September 14, 1983)

Advisory Opinion Text

Mrs. Charlotte B. Williams

Circuit Clerk

Monroe County

P. O. Box 843

Aberdeen, Mississippi 39730

Dear Mrs. Williams:

Attorney General Bill Allain has received your letter of request and has assigned it to me for research and reply, your letter of request stating:

“I am writing to you on behalf of the Monroe County Election Commissioners and Democratic Executive Committee seeking an opinion as to whether or not it is necessary that serially numbered ballot cards be initialed in a Primary Election?”

Section 23-3-13, Mississippi Code of 1972, states in pertinent part:

“... whereupon, and not before, the initialing manager shall endorse his initials on the back of an official blank ballot...at such place on the back of the ballot that the initials may be seen after the ballot has been marked and folded, and when so endorsed he shall deliver it to the voter, which... the voter shall mark in the manner provided by law, which when done the voter shall deliver the same to the initialing manager, in the presence of others, and the manager shall see that the ballot so delivered bears on the back thereof the genuine initials of the initialing manager, and if so, but not otherwise, the ballot shall be put into the ballot box;...

This is part of the Mississippi Corrupt Practices Law of 1935, applicable to primary elections only and which was adopted at a time only paper ballots were in use in this State.

The above requirement was one of those adopted by the Legislature to prevent election frauds. One's ballot was identifiable both before and after being voted as one and the same, it having a statutorily authorized identifying mark, to-wit: the initials of the initialing manager.

Section 23-7-311, ibid , pertinent to “electronic” or “punched card” or “marked card” voting requires that:

“If ballot cards are used, each card shall have a serially numbered stub which shall be removed by an election officer before being deposited in the ballot box. ...”

and in Section 23-7-317:

“If ballot cards are used, the voter, after he has marked his ballot card, shall place the ballot card inside the envelope provided for this purpose, with the stub extending outside said envelope, and return it to an election officer, who shall remove the stub and deposit the envelope with the ballot card inside the ballot box. No ballot from which the stub has been detached shall be accepted by the judge in charge of the ballot box, ...”

These serially numbered cards are assigned to each precinct and those workers there can identify an official ballot with all the safeguards the initialing system would have.

In the “electronic system” the card ballot is handed to the voter by the election officer and is returned by the voter to the election officer for deposit, thus serving with statutory authority the same purpose as initialing. Although the initialing safeguard has not been specifically repealed, its purpose has been preserved by another statute in “electronic” voting and its use no longer required.

Yours very truly,

Bill Allain Attorney General.