Fowler v. Board of Supervisors

Hammond, C. J., delivered the opinion of the Court. . By per curiam order of October 19, 1970 we affirmed for the reasons that follow the decree of the Circuit Court for Prince George’s County dismissing the bill of Flora. Daun Fowler, the appellant, that sought to have declared invalid the primary election conducted on September 15 in Prince George’s, County, and to have ordered a new prim.ary election. Mrs. Fowler claims standing to sue as a candidate and a resident and taxpayer of -the County.

She was one of twenty-five candidates ;in the- Democratic primary who-sought to become one of; five; nominees for County Com ⁶¹⁷ missioner. She ran twenty-first, receiving 8619 votes fewer than the lowest of five winners. She does not claim the irregularities in the election processes would have changed the result; indeed, she said she no longer wanted to become a County Commissioner or to run if a new primary were ordered. Furthermore, her most vigorous and plausible complaint is about disenfranchisement of Republican voters in the Republican primary.

This Court held in Sun Cab Co. v. Cloud, 162 Md. 419, 426-427 , that a taxpayer could seek the aid of a court of equity to enjoin an invalid election because he was preventing a waste of funds derived from taxation, but here the election had been held when judicial aid was sought. The question of standing does not seem to have been raised below and was not urged in this Court. Although we had grave doubts that Mrs. Fowler had standing, we assumed for the purpose of decision that she had and affirmed the decree appealed from rather than dismiss the appeal. The testimony of twenty-two witnesses before Judge Powers established that (a) some voting machines had not been properly “zeroed” before the first vote was cast; (b) some machines had not been correctly programmed ,so that Republican candidates in one sub-district were listed on machines placed in another sub-district (in the afternoon the errors were corrected and the polls in the affected places stayed open to Republican voters for an additional two hours, until 10:00 p.m., and this fact was frequently and widely announced on television and radio); (c) some machines had levers that were locked; (d) a number of service men from the headquarters of the voting machine company were flown to the County on the day of the election to repair and adjust machines and this caused delay; (e) the official records and reports of these repairmen were informally made and not in strict conformity with the directives of the statutes; (f)