Bonacker v. Chuckrow’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

13 state decisions

Most-quoted passages

The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 13 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““The statute further provides that the persons having the greatest number of votes for each office to be filled by the supervisor districts shall be duly elected to such offices. These determinations and declarations by the board become the official record of the title to the office and no ‘certificate of election’ is required to perfect that title. The record of the canvass in the second supervisor district is as follows: ‘The number of votes cast for supervisor of the second district for Benjamin Carson was 1,237 and 8 by the Socialist Party, for Fred Bonacker 1 ,343 giving Fred Bonacker a majority of 98, pending the investigation of the voting machine in the first district of the sixth ward.’ (Emphasis supplied.) “This canvass constitutes an equivocal and conditional statement of the number of votes cast for each candidate. It does not ‘determine and declare’ the number of votes cast, except with a reservation which seems to me to destroy the determination. Particularly, the board does not determine and declare which person was elected to the office. That determination and declaration may be said to follow from the figures as canvassed but it is the duty of the board of canvassers, nevertheless, to make the declaration of election and I think the record title to the office cannot be deemed perfected until the number of votes has been made unequivocal and the declaration of the person elected has been made.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Reese v. Dempsey