Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 6.djvu/532

 HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE courts and refused to bring cases. When suffrage leaders at- tempted to intervene the courts declared they had no jurisdiction. The suffragists were on duty in Columbus from January to October, long, weary, exciting months. It was clearly proved in the cases brought that the petitions were fraudulently circulated, signed, attested and certified. In the course of an attempt to bring a case against Franklin county a ruling of the Common Pleas Court was that the Secretary of State should be restrained from counting the signatures from seventeen counties because the Board of Elections had not properly certified them. The Secretary of State telegraphed these boards and they certified again, although there is no constitutional or statutory provision for recertification. Nevertheless when these corrected certifica- tions were made the Judge dissolved the injunction and 17,000 names were restored to the petition. U. S. Senator Warren G. Harding in a Decoration Day speech at Columbus declared him- self decidedly opposed to accepting this referendum. Cases were brought to the Supreme Court via the Court of Appeals, one a general suit demanding that petitions from certain counties be rejected because they were fraudulent and insufficient, the other to mandamus the Secretary of State to give the suffra- gists a hearing to prove their charges. The first was dismissed, the Supreme Court saying it had no jurisdiction over a case which had not been finished in the court from which the appeal had been taken. They returned to the Court of Appeals and tried one case on the constitutionality of the law of 1915, which gives the Board of Elections and Common Pleas Judges the right to examine the petitions and pass upon their validity, instead of the Secretary of State. The court decided to give no decision as election was so near at hand. The law made no provision to meet the expenses of petition suits and the suffragists had to bear the cost, no small undertak- ing. The election boards which were dominated by politicians who had been notorious for their opposition to suffrage, inter- posed every possible obstacle to the attempt of the suffragists to uncover fraud. In some counties it was impossible to bring cases. Women were absorbed in war work and thousands of them bitterly resented the fact that at such a time their right to