Trahan v. Simmons’s Empirical Analysis
1941
Citation profile
19 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 19 later decisions — most recently August 2005
19 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Relies on Hayes v. Abney · Kelly v. State ex rel. Kierskey
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 19 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“It was distinctly announced by this Court in Hayes v. Abney, 186 Miss. 208 , 188 So. 533, 535 , that `where enough illegal votes were cast to change the result or leave it in doubt, the election is void.' The rule as stated, whatever may be its ultimate effect, is applicable, however, only when the attorney general or district attorney has, in such a case, instituted an action in quo warranto, solely in the name of the State, to oust a person who has intruded himself into office under an election void for the stated reason. It can have no application in an election contest between the candidates wherein the candidate certified as having lost seeks, not to avoid the election, but to avail of it and to show by his contest that in fact he was elected by the majority of the qualified voters who voted. In such a contest he has the burden of the proof; and manifestly this is not met simply by showing that enough illegal votes were cast to change the result or leave it in doubt. And the contestant in making his proof cannot be allowed to place on the witness stand the qualified voters and show by them for whom they voted. Under our secret ballot system a qualified voter cannot be thus interrogated. But this exemption does not belong to an illegal voter. Such a person is not a voter, and his wrongful assertion and exercise of the privileges of a voter do not make him such. An extended examination of the authorities, many of which are noted in 20 C.J., pp. 246, 247, when read in the l”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.