Chapter 4 and when Mr. Devine got several write-in votes in the primary election, he changed his mind and decided to run for the office in the general election. The Democratic Party tried to get Mr. Devine’s name on the ballot but it was decided by the county auditor, who was in charge of preparing for the election, that Mr. Devine’s name should not be on the general election ballot because there was a concern that the Democratic Party did not nominate Mr. Devine in the way the law said it should be done. Mr. Devine brought a lawsuit challenging that decision. Meanwhile, election day was approaching. In order to be prepared in case Mr. Devine won his lawsuit, the county auditor made up stickers showing Mr. Devine’s name and the name of the office for which he was running. The stickers could be put on the ballots in case Mr. Devine won his lawsuit. But Mr. Devine lost the lawsuit, and the county auditor gave away the stickers to the secretary of a county taxpayers’ association who, in turn, handed out 3,000 of the stickers to the public—they could be put on the ballot in the general election as write-in votes for Mr. Devine.80 Mr. Devine campaigned as a write-in candidate. The intensity of his campaign, along with the publicity that was given to the circumstances surrounding his write-in candidacy, made him well-known to the voters. On election day, hundreds of people used the stickers with Mr. Devine’s name and the name of the office for which he was running. When all the votes were canvassed (counted), Mr. Devine won by two votes: 2,655 to 2,653. But in a later election challenge, a court reviewed a number of claims by Mr. Devine’s opponent, Raymond James Wonderlich, the Republican incumbent, and decided that particular ballots should not be counted. When those ballots were discounted, the court found that Mr. Wonderlich had won the election by 135 votes: 2,638 to 2,503. Mr. Devine appealed to the Supreme Court of Iowa. There were four categories of contested ballots: 108 ballots where the stickers were used, 77 ballots where the candidate’s name was written as “Devine” or as “F. Devine,” 46 ballots where the candidate’s name was written in a variety of other ways and 51 ballots with other irregularities (41 of which Mr. Devine claimed should be counted for him and 10 of which Mr. Wonderlich claimed should be counted for him). The Iowa statutes allowed voters to write in a person’s name and to put a cross or check mark next to the name. Mr. Wonderlich said that all 108 of the ballots with the stickers on them should not be counted because there were words other than Mr. Devine’s name on the stickers, and, in addition, 52 of the stickers were put in the wrong place on the ballots. The Iowa Supreme Court examined a statutory prohibition on marking a ballot in a way that would identify it, and a statutory requirement that a write-in vote be put in the proper place on the ballot. The court said that the legitimate statutory objects for these requirements are “shielding the elector from the influence of coercion and corruption, protecting the integrity of the ballot, and insuring orderly conduct of elections.” At 623. The supreme court decided that the extra words on the stickers—the words identifying the office for which Mr. Devine ran—were not identifying marks since they all were the same and, because the county auditor had printed the stickers all the same way, were not intended to allow particular voters to be identified. So the supreme court agreed with the trial court on that issue. But Mr. Wonderlich also challenged all 108 sticker ballots because the additional language “spoiled” them. A state law said that voters were to be told not to vote with a spoiled ballot—those that were defaced by erasures, marked-out words or 80 The state law allowed voters to write in the name of any person they wanted on the ballot in the general election instead of marking the ballot for the candidates whose names were printed on the ballot. 95