Originally Posted by
artds
To mam2009:
Your high school analogy doesn't quite track the facts here. A better analogy would be as follows: your teacher gives you a take-home test and tells you that you need to turn it in on May 15th if you want to participate in the graduation cermony on May 30th. You get a jump on things and turn it in early on May 10th instead. Should you be prohibited from graduating because you didn't turn your test in ON May 15th like the teacher instructed? Or is it reasonable to interpret the teacher's instruction to mean that it needs to be tirned in BY May 15th? To answer that question, you need to consider whether there is any conceivable policy reason that would cause your teacher to not accept your test prior to May 15th, or if such a hard date requirement would be arbitrary. If the latter, then the reasonable interpretation is that turning it any time on or before May 15th is acceptable. Likewise, no public policy is served by requiring Duggan to sit on his signatures for two weeks before turning them in. Such a requirement would be arbitrary. Therefore, it is reasonable to interpret the 1-year requiremt to mean that you must be a resident for 1 year by the DEADLINE for filing, and not by the date you happen to send a runner down to the election office to turn in the signatures you collected. Think about how ridiculous the cure for such a defect would be: had this issue became known prior to the deadline for filing, Duggan could have cured it by having the election office give him his signatures back two weeks after he filed them, then literally hand them right back to the election officials two seconds later in order to comply with this arbitrary requirement to not turn in your paperwork too early. If you can think of a single conceivable public policy that would be served by such a rule, I'm all ears. Bottom line: this decision should be overturned, and there's a very good chance it will be.