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The cost of the grounds and the erection of the building has been about $100,000, and it would seem to be poor economy to let a structure costing so much money, and so well suited for the purpose, stand unused and become the abode of owls and bats, and at the same time pay high rates of rent for rooms situated within a few squares of this unoccupied but elegant structure.

It is respectfully submitted that a small appropriation should be made to keep the building in repair.

The Commission has employed a janitor to care for the building, causing his family to take their quarters therein, who is being paid out of the appropriation made for the contingent expenses of the Commission, but the limited amount of that fund precludes the application of any portion of it toward the repairs necessary about the building or necessary work about the grounds. So elegant a building should be well taken care of and not permitted to go to ruin for the want of a small amount of money, which will be the case in the absence of an appropriation.

Suggestions have been made by some parties that it should be turned into a soldiers' home, and by others that it should be donated to the City of Salt Lake to be used for high-school purposes.

While these uses are each to be commended the absence of any Government building in the city, and the large outlay necessarily paid annually in the way of rents for offices, constrains this Commission to recommend that it be utilized as above suggested.

ELECTIONS.

Since the last annual report of the Commission elections have been held in all the counties in the Territory, and in thirteen towns and thirty-three cities.

At the general election held on the 8th of November, 1892, the following number of officers were chosen, to whom, in all cases where the law required it, certificates of election were furnished, without any charge therefor, as the Commission have been heretofore falsely accused of doing.

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Presidents.

Trustees..

Town officers elected November 8, 1892.

Election for and against removal of county seat, in Emery County.
Special election to incorporate city of Sandy.

13

52

Election officers appointed.

Judges of election appointed October, 1892.

Canvassers appointed October, 1892 .

1, 159 344

Registration officers appointed July, 1893.

The following is the analysis of the vote by counties, November 8, 1892:

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The registration prior to the election held the 8th of November, 1892, was a very full one, representing as nearly the electoral strength of the qualified voters of the Territory as it is likely to be represented by any registration that may take place in the future. Political excitement was high, the respective parties were represented in the canvass by very able men, and each party was at great pains to get out its full strength.

It is a matter of much gratification to the Commission to say that the registration was made with great fairness and legal strictness, and that the election, though party spirit ran high, was free from turbulence and irregularities, and was both in respect to the registration and the election as free from fraud as those in any other State or Territory.

The revision of the registration lists for the November election is now completed, so far as the house-to-house canvass is concerned, the posting of notices of the completion of the lists, the filing and hearing of objections to the qualifications of electors who may not be entitled to registration, and the filing with the clerk of the probate court the oaths administered and signed by those permitted to register, being about all that remains to be done. The judges who will hold the ensuing elec tion are yet to be appointed, which will be done during the month of October. There will be about 1,200 of them.

AMNESTY.

When the time to begin the revision of the registration lists for the coming November election arrived, the Commission found itself very much embarrassed in consequence of the legal proposition presented by the proclamation of President Harrison of the 17th of February, 1893, granting amnesty and pardon to that class of the Mormon people who were, by the eighth section of the act of Congress of March 3, 1887, commonly called the Edmunds-Tucker act, denied the right of registering and voting.

In its embarrassment, being desirous to do right, and an injustice to no one, it instinctively turned to the law officer of the Government for an official opinion and solution of what the Commission considered was purely a legal proposition. To secure such an opinion the following communication was addressed to the Secretary of the Interior:

OFFICE OF THE UTAH COMMISSION,

Salt Lake City, June 19, 1893.

SIR: The Commission of Registration and Election for the Territory of Utah, commonly called the "Utah Commission," in the discharge of the duties enjoined by the acts of Congress finds itself embarrassed between the acts of the 22d March, 1882, known as the Edmunds act, and of the 3d of March, 1887, known as the EdmundsTucker act, on the one side and on the other side by the proclamation of President Harrison of the 17th of February, 1893, granting full pardon and amnesty to certain classes of persons in the Territory of Utah who, by the 8th section of the act of 3d March, 1887, were denied the privilege of registering and voting at all elections. As chairman of the Commission, I am directed to ask that you refer the proposition to the Attorney-General of the United States for an official opinion, as to whether the President's proclamation has the effect to restore, unconditionally, the right to register and vote of all those persons laboring under the disabilities imposed by the acts aforesaid; and, also, if it applies to persons convicted of offenses enumerated therein, as well as to those who have not been convicted. (Murphy vs. Ramsey, 114 U.S. R. Reynolds vs. U. S., 98 U. S. R.)

This question requires immediate settlement, as the period of registration is near at hand, when the rule, whatever it may be, will have to be applied; wherefore an early opinion is respectfully asked.

I have the honor to be, very respectfully,

Hon. HOKE SMITH,

Secretary of the Interior, Washington, D. C.

A. B. WILLIAMS, Chairman Utah Commission.

The following is the correspondence which ensued by letter and telegraph regarding the same:

Hon. A. B. WILLIAMS,

WASHINGTON, D. C., June 7, 1893.

Chairman Utah Commission, Salt Lake City, Utah:

Question submitted to Attorney-General for opinion on 27th ultimo.
None rendered up to this date.

WM. H. SIMS, Acting Secretary of Interior.

[Telegram.]

Hon. HOKE SMITH,

OFFICE OF THE UTAH COMMISSION, July 5, 1893.

Secretary of the Interior, Washington, D. C'. :

The Utah Commission desires to know if any reply has been made to their communication of the 19th ultimo as to the effect of pardon and amnesty upon the electoral qualifications of persons convicted of polygamous offenses in Utah. A. B. WILLIAMS,

Chairman.

Hon. HOKE SMITH,

Secretary of the Interior,

OFFICE OF THE UTAH COMMISSION, July 11, 1893.

Washington, D. C. :

The time for the registration of voters in the Territory is so near at hand that the Utah Commission is embarrassed by the delay of the Attorney-General in not giving an opinion on the effect of the President's proclamation of amnesty upon polygamists' right to register and vote, solicited heretofore through your office, and most respectfully urges that it be furuished at the earliest possible time.

Respectfully,

A. B. WILLIAMS,

Chairman.

WASHINGTON, D. C., July 17, 1893.

Hon. A. B. WILLIAMS,

Chairman Utah Commission Salt Lake, Utah : Under date of 12th instant, Attorney-General declined to render an opinion on question presented in your letter of the 19th ult., having no authority to advise Commission in exercise of duties of their office.

WM. H. SIMS,
Acting Secretary.

The Commission did not suppose that it was asking the Attorney. General for his advice as to the "exercise of the duties of their offices," but believed they were submitting a question as to the construction to be given to the proclamation of the President as applied to the acts of Congress above referred to, having in view the opinions of the Supreme Court of the United States rendered in the cases of Reynolds rs. the United States (98 U. S. R.), and of Murphy rs. Ramsey (114 U. S. R.). Nor has the Commission to this time, after much reflection, been able to determine how such an opinion would have been in any wise advisory as to ' the duties of their offices, but still regard it as a plain legal proposition. Bowing to the refusal to render the opinion asked, the Commission proceeded to consider the question and made the following ruling under which the registration has proceeded and which is now practically completed.

OPINION OF THE COMMISSION.

The following resolution was presented and unanimously adopted by the Utah Commission:

Whereas, a difference of opinion appears to exist as to the efficacy of the amnesty granted by ex-President Harrison to relieve sexual offenders in Utah from prior disabilities to vote; and

Whereas, in the interest of elective government that doubt ought to be solved in favor of the man: Therefore

Resolved, That any person in the Territory otherwise qualified to vote and who has abstained from committing any such sexual offense since November 1, 1890, ought, in the opinion of the Commission, for the reason aforesaid, to be permitted to register.

SALT LAKE CITY, July 18, 1893.

While we voluntarily concur in the proposition to advise the registrars and officers of the various election precincts that in the opinion of the Commission they may and should permit former polygamists to register as voters, if otherwise qualified, upon their taking an oath or affirmation that they have not, since the 1st of November, 1890, been guilty of the practice forbidden by the acts of Congress known as the Edmunds and Edmunds-Tucker laws, we desire to record that it is our opinion, speaking strictly from a legal standpoint, and not as we might wish were its legal effects, that the deprivation of the voting privilege is merely an electoral regulation, fixing the qualifications of voters, and not a penalty or punishment for crime or disobedience to the law, and therefore that the amnesty proclamation of the Presi dent does not, without further legislation, restore the privilege of voting to those thus disfranchised.

As this is a question, however, upon which opinions differ, even among those who mmand respect for legal acumen, it becomes so much a question of doubt that we

feel impelled to resolve the doubt in favor of those who suffer from the deprivation, and therefore give our assent.

If an error of judgment, it is an error on the side of clemency, is in accord with the spirit of the proclamation, and, as we believe, in accord with the sentiment of the people of the Territory, as well as one which can more readily be defended than an error in the other direction.

R. S. ROBERTSON,
A. B. WILLIAMS.
JOHN A. McCLERNAND.

We cast our vote in favor of the resolution for the reason that we believe it to be the law.

G. L. GODFREY.
HENRY C. LETT.

As appears above, the Commission was divided in opinion on the question, as there was a division of opinion among the most eminent lawyers and jurists of the Territory, the majority being of the opinion that a strict construction being given to the acts of Congress and the opinions of the Supreme Court of the United States, cited above, would operate to the continued disfranchisement of the classes as electors hitherto affected.

Having invoked an opinion on the question from the Attorney-General, through the Secretary of the Interior, as it had done on previous occasions with satisfactory results, and failing to meet with success, the Commission was left to decide the question for itself, and the majority, being met by an able and respectable minority as well as by the opinions of some of the ablest lawyers in the Territory, yielded so far as to agree to a liberal construction of the law, and if there was a doubt on the proposition to give the benefit of it in favor of the right of the hitherto disfranchised electors, and in conformity to that opinion issued a circular to the registering officers that had been appointed, advising them that in the opinion of the Commission it would be right to permit affected classes to register on taking the proper oath, provided they did not come within the exception made in the proclamation of the President on that subject.

As a legal proposition it is yet unsettled judicatively, and the Commission respectfully recommends that Congress do legislatively pass upon this important question.

The following is the text of the President's proclamation referred to above:

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

A PROCLAMATION.

Whereas Congress, by a statute approved March 22, 1882, and by statutes in furtherance and amendment thereof, defined the crimes of bigamy, polygamy, and unlawful cohabitation in the Territories and other places within the exclusive jurisdiction of the United States and prescribed a penalty for such crimes; and

Whereas, on or about the 6th day of October, 1890, the Church of the Latter-Day Saints, commonly known as the Mormon Church, through its president, issued a manifesto proclaiming the purpose of said church no longer to sanction the practice of polygamous marriages and calling upon all members and adherents of said church to obey the laws of the United States in reference to said subject-matter; and

Whereas it is represented that since the date of said declaration the members and adherents of said church have generally obeyed said laws and have abstained from plural marriages and polygamous cohabitation; and

Whereas, by a petition dated December 19, 1891, the officials of said church, pledg ing the membership thereof to a faithful obedience to the laws against plural marriage and unlawful cohabitation, have applied to me to grant amnesty for past offenses again t said laws, which request a very large number of influential non-Mormons, residing in the Territories, have also strongly urged; and

Whereas, the Utah Commission, in their report bearing date September 15, 1892, recommended that said petition be granted and said amnesty proclaimed, under

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