Gutierrez, Carl, et al. v. Ada, Joseph, et al. (01/19/2000)

By: Amy Merrick, Medill News Service

Questions presented

Should the statutory words ""in any election"" be read to mean the entire general election or should it mean in the election for a given office, for the purposes of determining a majority vote?

Brief

The Nov. 3, 1998 general election in Guam, a tiny island territory of the United States with a population of roughly 150,000, began unremarkably.

Voters chose between slates of candidates for governor and lieutenant governor; the candidates ran together and were elected as a package. The same election encompassed a number of other positions: representative from Guam to the U.S. Congress, members of the Legislature of Guam and various school board seats.

On Nov. 16, the Guam Election Commission certified that the Democratic slate of Carl T.C. Gutierrez for governor and Madeleine Z. Bordallo for lieutenant governor had defeated the Republican slate, Joseph F. Ada and Felix P. Camacho. Gutierrez, the incumbent governor, had received 24,250 votes; Ada's duo got 21,200, losing by 3,050 votes.

Gutierrez and Bordallo seemed to have captured the required majority. But on Dec. 1, Ada and Camacho filed suit in federal court calling for a runoff election. The election commission, they claimed, had improperly excluded some ballots when calculating the total number of votes.

Their argument is based on these numbers: Of the people who voted for either the Gutierrez slate or the Ada slate, Gutierrez did receive more votes. However, 1,294 voters chose write-in candidates, and 609 people voted for both slates. Another 1,313 people chose candidates for other positions in the general election, but they left the gubernatorial slate blank.

If one counts all of these ballots toward the total, then Gutierrez won 49.83% of the 48,666 total ballots cast -- 83 votes shy of a majority.

But the Guam Election Commission excluded the 1,313 ballots that failed to name a choice for governor. Once those ballots were deducted from the total, Gutierrez had 51.21% of the remaining votes -- a slim majority, but enough to win.

Ada and Camacho argued that the election commission had erred, that those 1,313 votes should have been included. Their logic turned on three words from the Guam Organic Act of 1950, which first provided for a governor of the territory.

The act reads as follows:

""The Governor and Lieutenant Governor shall be chosen jointly, by the casting of each voter of a single vote applicable to both offices. If no candidates receive a majority of the votes cast in any election, on the fourteenth day thereafter a runoff election shall be held.""

According to Ada and Camacho, the phrase ""in any election"" is most telling, for it means Congress intended that the majority be measured by the votes cast in the entire election, not simply in the race for governor.

Gutierrez countered that ""votes cast"" meant actual votes cast for governor and lieutenant governor, rather than ballots in which the governor's contest is left blank.

On Dec. 9, the district court sided with Ada and Camacho, ordering a runoff election for Dec. 19, six weeks after the original election. Gutierrez and Bordallo appealed, and on Dec. 15 the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals postponed the runoff pending the outcome of the appeal.

On April 19, 1999, a unanimous appeals panel affirmed, siding with Ada and Camacho, and returned the case to the district court for further action.

""We read 'votes cast' as including all votes cast at the general election,"" the court stated in its opinion, ""for Congress presumably would not have included the phrase 'in any election,' if it meant to refer only to the votes cast in the single election for governor and lieutenant governor.""

The opinion stated that Gutierrez's interpretation made the phrase ""in any election"" unnecessary.

The U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari on Sept. 10, 1999.

Listening to the oral arguments Dec. 6, 1999, the justices appeared confused by the interpretation Ada's lawyers gave the election statute.

""Do you know of any other state that chooses its chief executive by such a provision?"" Justice Antonin Scalia asked Dennis Riordan, Ada's lawyer. ""This kind of thing could potentially go on and on.""

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg compared a voter who failed to mark a choice for governor to someone who wrote in Donald Duck. Blank votes, she said, seem to say ""neither of the above, no one for governor.""

After the arguments, Ada noted that his case prevailed in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals despite similar skepticism from the justices.

""Things looked that way in the lower court,"" he said.

As the case pended, Gutierrez continued to serve as governor of Guam, and no runoff election was scheduled. Under Guam law, a runoff election must be held within 14 days if no candidate captures a majority in the gubernatorial race.

On Jan. 19, 2000, a unanimous Court reversed and remanded the case, validating the election and tenure of Gutierrez, the sitting governor.

Writing for the Court, Justice David Souter said it would produce a strange result to require a runoff election ""even though one slate already had a majority of all those who cared to choose among gubernatorial candidates.""