Dissenting Opinion, per JONES, J. The proposition was again defeated, by a majority of 182,905. Can it be otherwise surmised than that the women of the state would have been endowed with full suffrage at all elections, including municipal, if either of these proposals had passed? In the constitutional convention of 1912, proposals embodying woman suffrage and home rule ran along side by side, were discussed from every viewpoint and angle, and in the debates that ensued not a line espousing the right of the female sex to vote at municipal elections can be found in the report of convention proceedings., And in the election following, to adopt or reject the proposed amendments, neither on the hustings nor in the public press do I recall a single instance of the advocacy of this strange constitutional birth, which is now legitimatized by judicial mandate. The decision in this case does violence to the plain terms of the constitution. The province of the court is to interpret, where interpretation is required. It cannot arrogate to itself the right to make a constitution. It must enforce the terms of the constitution irrespective of underlying public policy. As stated in The State, ex rel., v. Board of Elections, 80 Ohio St., 471, 491: "The question here is, whether a provision, whose meaning is certain, shall be enforced. It cannot be necessary to repeat the reasons which have led this court to give an affirmative answer to that question. * * According to the view entertained by all constitutional lawyers, constitutions may not be amended by violence." And as conforming to the intention of the makers Dissenting Opinion, per JONES, J. of the constitution, and of the people who adopted it, the language of Judge Ranney in Hill v. Higdon, 5 Ohio St., 243, 248, is peculiarly apt: "It is our duty to give a construction to the constitution as will make it consistent with itself, and will harmonize and give effect to all its various provisions. To do this, we have only to suppose that the convention used language with reference to its popular and received signification; and applied it as it had been practically applied for a long series of years." In this connection it may be stated that the Constitution of 1802 had substantially the same sex qualifications as has the Constitution of 1851, both granting the male sex the qualifications of an elector "in all elections;" and this phrase received, at least so far as political elections were concerned, the sanction of popular thought and judicial decision as applicable to municipal as well as to county, township and state elections. The rule of construction is also well stated in Wilcox v. Nolze, 34 Ohio St., 520, 523: "The rule applicable to constitutions, as well as statutes, which may be properly invoked in this case, is that, where the language is clear, there is no room for construction; and the spirit of a provision must be extracted from its words, and not from conjectures aliunde." Is it a reasonable construction that the members of the constitutional convention conceived or entertained the purpose of granting by legislation or municipal charter special privileges to women in the municipalities of the state while denying them to the women of the rural communities? The lat Dissenting Opinion, per JONES, J. ter are just as much interested in governmental problems and in fiscal affairs as are their sisters dwelling in the cities. Yet in no possible event, under the strained construction given Section 1, Article V, can the women of hamlets and townships outside of municipalities ever hope to vote for trustees and other fiscal officers in townships, without amendment of the constitution, while those of their sex fortuitously dwelling in municipalities may vote for their fiscal municipal officers without such amendment. Whether decided correctly or not, the case of State, ex rel. Mills, v. Board of Elections et al., post, 194, granting women the right to vote for school officers, had the merit at least of placing the women of town and country on an equal plane and with equal suffrage throughout the entire state. Under the construction here adopted, a municipality by charter, or the general assembly by law, may provide any qualifications for its electorate in municipal elections. Chartered cities may prescribe distinct and various qualifications without any semblance of uniformity. They or the legislature may nullify the constitutional requirements with respect to age and residence found in the section. involved. It is the uniform and fundamental principle of law that in the construction or interpretation of a constitution recourse may be had to the proceedings of the constitutional convention. On February 8, 1851, while the article on the elective franchise was before that body, Mr. Taylor, a member of that convention, offered the following as an addi Dissenting Opinion, per JONES, J. tional section to the elective article: "Section 7. The General Assembly shall have power to extend the right of suffrage to inhabitants of this State not hereby qualified as electors." (2 Debates, page 555.) It will be observed that this was not offered as a substitute for Section 1, Article V, but to supplement that section by giving to others not included therein the right of suffrage by legislative action. Had Section 7 been adopted, while the qualifications of the male sex would still have remained intact under Section 1 aforesaid, it would have permitted the general assembly to extend the right of suffrage to women in municipalities. The fact that this supplemental section was defeated by a vote of 11 yeas to 68 nays indisputably evinces the intention of the convention to commit the question of the entire elective franchise to the male sex, and to deny legislative interference by any extension thereof. Prior to the adoption of the home-rule section our courts had uniformly and consistently denied women the right to hold any appointive or elective public office, whether that office were of constitutional origin or not. This is evinced by the decision of this court that a woman cannot hold the office of notary public, although this office is not a constitutional office but purely one of legislative creation. (Section 119 et seq., General Code, and State, ex rel. Atty. Genl., v. Adams, post, 196.) The holding of this court that the Elective Franchise Article of the Constitution comprehends offices and elections of constitutional origin or cognizance and does not embrace municipal elec Dissenting Opinion, per JONES, J. tions is largely based upon the case of Scown v. Czarnecki, 264 Ill., 305, where, by a divided court, that state held that under the provisions of its constitution the legislature had authority to provide for municipal suffrage. The opinion of the majority in that case is not convincing, but the separate opinions of the three dissenting judges are buttressed by convincing reason and judicial logic. The Scown case is against the overwhelming weight of authority of the decided cases relating to the right of female suffrage under constitutions similar to our own: Coffin et al. v. Election Commissioners, 97 Mich., 188; Goggeshall et al. v. City of Des Moines, 138 Ia., 730, 736; Gougar v. Timberlake, 148 Ind., 38; Allison v. Blake, 57 N. J. Law, 6; In re Inspectors of Election, 25 N. Y. Supp., 1063; Minor v. Happersett, 21 Wall., 162, and Spencer v. Board of Registration, 1 MacArthur (D. C.), 169. The foregoing cases clearly establish the judicial principle that under such language as employed in our constitution, the constitution has taken entire and complete control of electoral qualifications, and that any attempt to limit or add to those qualifications is nugatory. In three of the foregoing cases an attempt was made by the legislature to confer limited suffrage upon women in local or municipal affairs. The principle announced in the majority opinion herein, to the effect that the constitutional requirements relating to electoral qualifications in Section 1, Article V, do not apply to offices unknown to the constitution, has been repudiated many times by the decisions of the supreme court of this state. |