Guidelines for Understanding, Adjudicating, and Resolving Disputes in Elections Despite all the laws, rules, regulations, and procedures put in place to promote regular, free and fair elections, there is no such thing as a perfect election. Things will go wrong. The unexpected will happen. Voting machines will malfunction, power outages will occur, people will make mistakes, and when the election is close, election challenges will be made. But, the fact that an election is not perfect does not mean it cannot be fair. When there is adequate preparation, education, and when clear standards are in place before the election, there can be transparency and accountability. If a culture is established where good people are empowered to do the right thing, most election problems can be resolved in a manner that gives each voter confidence that he or she had the opportunity to speak by casting a vote and that the vote was properly counted. This leads to my final point about elections in a participating democracy. Not only must a citizen be able to speak (by casting a vote), but that citizen also must be heard (to have the vote properly counted). In a democracy, the right to have one’s validly cast vote counted is as important as the act of voting itself. The right of suffrage can just as easily be denied, debased, or diluted by the failure to properly count the votes. As the playwright Tom Stoppard wrote, “In a democracy, it is not the voting that matters; it is the counting.” In essence, guaranteeing that a voter can both speak and be heard is what this book, Guidelines for Understanding, Adjudicating, and Resolving Disputes in Elections, is about. It will help to provide the education, procedures, and skills necessary to enable good people to do the right thing — to ensure that not only will the people be able to speak by casting a valid vote, but they will be heard by having their intent properly recorded when their vote is counted. With this guarantee, a democratic society cannot only survive, it can thrive. Paul H. Anderson Associate Justice, Minnesota Supreme Court xviii