A Mayor Willing to Resign Over a Ballot Technicality
When Olympia’s election tickets were printed under the wrong law, Mayor Horr offered to step down rather than hold office on a legal loophole—and urged the council to appoint the people’s chosen successors.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The Tribune stated yesterday that it did not think the error made by the city attorney or city clerk in not having tickets at the late elections printed according to the amended law would set aside the will of the people expressed at the ballot box. City Attorney Fitch, whose duty it should have been to see that the tickets were printed according to law, says, “There’s no substantial error,” but is uncertain and there might be a “substantial error.”
Mayor Horr takes the right view of it. He says: “If there is any doubt about the validity of the election I shall resign, the resignation to take effect on January 12, and I shall advise the councilmen who were not re-elected to do the same. My recommendation to the council will be to choose in our places those who have been elected by the people. The people have had a fair and honest election, and I would think very little of a man who would hold his office on a technicality. As I have said, we can appoint the men who have been endorsed by the people, and then they will hold by two titles.”
This plan would legalize the new city council in case a contest was made relative to the ballots and the election set aside. The old council would hold over, and the present mayor and certain councilmen, in selecting their successors, would make the old become the new, just as the people intended the other day at the polls.
“I would think very little of a man who would hold his office on a technicality.”
Election disputes turning on ballot design and procedural errors are still with us; what stands out here is a mayor willing to resign rather than govern on a technicality. Olympia’s 1891 fight asks whether the will of voters can survive the paperwork.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.