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61 Miss. 556

Steele v. Calhoun

Mississippi Supreme Court

Decided April 15, 1884

Mississippi Supreme Court · decided 1884-04-15

Hon. A. T. Eoane, Judge. At the general election for county officers in Tallahatchie County in November, 1883, J. H. Steele and W. M. Calhoun were rival candidates for the office of sheriff, Steele being the nominee of what was known as the “ Independent party,” and Calhoun the nominee of the Democratic party. Steele received eight hundred and eighty-six votes and Calhoun received six hundred and ninety-one.

Cited in Black's (1910)’s definition of “Device”

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1884-04-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 9 later decisions — most recently October 1943

9 state decisions

401884189019001910192019301940decided

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.

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Campbell, C. J.,

¶1delivered the opinion of the court.

¶2The Dogwood Flat Church was the voting place for the election precinct in which it was situated, and had been for years without any formal designation by competent authority, but by the action of those participating in the several elections held there. Several months before the election of 1883 the house was removed to a point three-quarters of a mile from its former site and erected there by general consent of the neighborhood, and it was still called by its former name and was used as it had been before, for public assemblies and holding justices’ courts. The election of November, 1883, was held in Dogwood Flat Church at its new site, and it does not appear that any elector was at any loss to ascertain where the election for that election district was being held or was prevented from voting because of a change of the place at which the polls were opened.

¶3The election was properly held at Dogwood Flat Church.

¶4The marked ballots were properly rejected. The rule established by § 137 of the Code of 1880 excludes “any device or mark by which one ticket may be known or distinguished from another,” and we are not permitted to distinguish between the different devices or marks which may be, put on ballots. “Any device or mark, etc.,” is prohibited and sufficient to condemn the ballot on which it is found.

¶5Affirmed.

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