Nelson v. Keisling

At issue in this case is whether the courts may invalidate otherwise lawful initiative petition signatures on the ground that some of the signature gatherers were not registered voters. Plaintiff concedes that no statute authorizes the courts to do so. He argues that the courts nevertheless have the “common-law” authority to invalidate signatures when confronted with a failure to comply with “nontechnical” provisions of the state’s election laws. Defendant, the Secretary of State (the Secretary), contends that the sole remedy is a statutory fine. The trial court agreed with the Secretary and…