Ross v. Hellyer

• Citation: 26 F. 413
• Parties: ROSS v. HELLYER and another. [1]
• Decision Date: 01 October 1885
• Court: U.S. District Court — Southern District of Iowa

26 F. 413

ROSS v. HELLYER and another. ^[1]

United States Circuit Court, S.D. Iowa, Central Division.

October, 1885

P. F Bartle and S. F. Balliet, for complainant.

Gatch Connor & Weaver, for defendants.

LOVE J.

The evidence in this case is convincing to my mind that Robert Hellyer, the defendant, changed his residence from Nevada to Boone without any definite intention of returning to the former place. That he made an actual change of abode from the one place to the other there is no doubt. With what intent or purpose did he make the change? Was it his purpose in going to Boone to make that place his domicile? If it was not, then why did he commit the offense of voting at elections in Boone? The reasoning of counsel for the defendant on this fact is, to my mind, entirely unsatisfactory. Counsel say:

'First. As to the conceded fact of Hellyer having voted while living at Boone, it signified one of three things: either that he was a citizen by actual change of domicile, and therefore had the right to vote, or that he erroneously supposed he had the right to vote without such change, or that he knew his voting to be illegal and criminal. Either the second or third having been the fact would be consistent with the defendants' present claim. Hellyer's own testimony is that, while he did not remember having voted, he did so, if at all, because he supposed actual residence alone gave him the right to vote.'

Again, it is said that he may have erroneously supposed he had a right to vote without a change of residence. The court cannot accept this argument as sound. It is manifestly untenable. Ignorance of the law in any man of ordinary intelligence cannot be presumed or assumed. Any man in Iowa must be densely ignorant not to know that he cannot reside in one county and vote in another without committing a public offense. To say nothing of the legal presumption that every man knows the law, it is a matter of common knowledge with our people that the right of suffrage must be exercised in the county in which the citizen has his residence. If Hellyer went to Boone with no intent to make it his residence, but for some mere temporary purpose, regarding Story county at the same time as his place of residence, it seems to me most unreasonable that he could have been ignorant of the fact that in voting in Boone county he was committing a grave public offense. But counsel say:

'Why may we not, if necessary, assume that Hellyer knowingly violated the law in voting at Boone, rather than that both himself and wife falsely testified that their residence there

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