Jasper County Democrat, Volume 5, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 October 1902 — ABOUT CIRCUIT CLERK ELECTION. [ARTICLE]

ABOUT CIRCUIT CLERK ELECTION.

The republican attorney-general is reported to have given out an opinion that perhaps the law passed by the last legislature—also republican—wherein terms of county officers begin on January first “next following the term of the present incumbent,” is bad in some respects, and advised that nominations for county clerk, where the term of office of the present incumbent, to which they were elected, expire between the coming election and the election two years hence, be made and voted on at the coming election. The term of the clerk in this county would, under the old law, have expired in May, 1904, but as the new law expressly states that all county officers’ terms "shall begin on the first day of January next following the term of office of the present, incumbent,” his term is extended to January 1, 1905. This is a republican law, passed by a republican legislature, and is the law until pronounced bad by the supreme court. This has not been done, and the opinion of the attorney-general (if he has given any such—we have seen nothing of it) is of no more value than that of any other good lawyer, and many of the latter say the law is good, and that when the matter reaches the higher court, if it does reach there, it will so be pronounced. Be this as it may, however, it stands on our statute books as the law, and it is the law. The attorney-general has not the power to declare it unconstitutional, and it seems to us it is very poor taste in him to bring the matter up at tbis late day in this manner, as our local republican friends claim he has. We can not anticipate decisions of the supreme court, and we think democrats should not do so in this case. The present incumbents to county office will hold office until the first day of January next following the terms to which they were elected, and if this be so, and the law so states, no clerk is to be elected in Jasper county this year, for we can not elect an officer to an office that he does not take until after another general election. The republicans here have fell in with the attorney-general’s alleged idea and have called a convention of the old county delegates to meet here Oct. 14, to nominate a clerk. The woods are full of candidates, among whom are Chas. C. Warner of Rensselaer, the republican county chairman; Estil E. Pierson, the candidate four years ago; W. R. Lee, of McCoysburg; one or two from the “north side,’’ and, it is alleged, “Hinky Dink” Robertsons of the Wheatfield wipd-jabber, as a dark horse. The democrats have taken no ac-

tion in the matter as yet, and will probaly not do so, as the law by word and intent says that no clerk is to be elected here until November, 1904, The report that the state chairmen of both committees had agreed that clerks should be elected this fall no doubt originated in the fertile brain of the same gang of ringsters who engineered the “judicial convention,” as the democrats know of no such arrangement or agreement.