Page:Dakota Territory Reports.djvu/453

 and one county commissioner, and the respondent sought by the application to compel him to amend his notices and issue new ones, incorporating therein the offices of register of deeds, sheriff, treasurer, judge of probate court, district attorney, coroner, superintendent of public schools, assessor, and the other two county commissioners.

This raises the question squarely, whether it was his duty to incorporate into such notices the names of the last above named offices, and thus the question is raised whether such named offices were to be filled at the election thereafter to be held on the 6th day of November, 1877.

On behalf of appellant, we claim that it was not his duty to name these offices in his notices, because they were not offices which by law were to be filled at the election in 1877, for the reasons: 1st, nq vacancy was shown to exist; 2d, the power of appointment had been given to the governor, and had been exercised under the special act; said officers, so appointed, were to hold their offices until their successors should be elected and qualified according to law; and 3d, there was no law authorizing the election of such officers until the general election in the year 1878. (§ 15, p. 42 of the Revised Codes.)

This special enactment cannot, by any fair construction of it, when speaking of the election and qualification of the successors to these offices, be held to refer to any other enactment providing for special cases, but must be held to refer only to the general law upon that subject, to-wit: to the provisions of said section 15, referring to the officers of organized counties. This became an organized county at once, upon the appointment of these officers by the governor, and their qualifying.

No where in the statutes is there found any provision for the election, in organized counties, of such officers, save in said section 15, which provides for their election in 1878, and every two years thereafter.

Section 3 of said chapter 21, relating to counties and county officers and the organization of counties, (page 40, Revised Code), provides that county commissioners appointed upon the petition of fifty voters and upwards, may appoint county officers, and that such officers so appointed by such county