The Resolution of Election Disputes: Legal Principles that Control Election Challenges B. When the right to vote is abridged, the fairness of the election is undermined. The concept of fairness is one that is ingrained in the legal principles that apply to the resolution of election disputes. We focused on fairness very early in this book when, in Chapter 1, we discussed the fact that common law principles ensure fairness in election challenges. There, it was stated that not all election irregularities arise in circumstances that are neat and clean. Even though there is no common law basis for challenges to elections, courts will apply common law principles to the facts of an election challenge when fairness demands that they be applied. The doctrine of fairness in an election context routinely is couched in terms of determining the free expression of the public’s will…. It is the touchstone of courts’ discussions of how to treat the facts in these cases. Since that early chapter, this book has described many cases in which the courts have reached decisions based on whether the result seemed to be fair or not fair. For example, as described in Jernigan v. Curtis, there were irregularities at two precincts in Monroe County, Kentucky. In the West Tompkinsville Precinct, many things went wrong and the court shrugged off the irregularities as unintended errors and, therefore, not grounds for voiding the election results, saying, “It has not been demonstrated that the errors set out above so destroyed the fairness of the election in this precinct that the votes of this precinct should be discarded.” Jernigan v. Curtis, 622 S.W.2d 686, 690 (Ky. Ct. App. 1981) (emphasis supplied).87 But when the election officials at the Fountain Run Precinct caused the same kinds of irregularities, which were augmented by apparent widespread vote buying, the court found “flagrant, extensive, and corrupt violations as to destroy the fairness and equality of the election.” At 693 (emphasis supplied). This theme is especially notable where courts found that procedural requirements were directory, not mandatory, and therefore did not require voiding an election or barring a candidate from office. Take, for example, Tate v. Morley, 153 S.E.2d 437 (Ga. 1967), discussed in Chapter 3, where Dr. Horace E. Tate won in the primary election and was elected in the general election to a seat on the Atlanta, Georgia, Board of Education. However, he had qualified as a candidate in the primary election without paying the required qualifying fee and after the time for filing his qualifying papers had passed. It turned out that Dr. Tate was allowed to proceed because the officials who oversaw the nominating process were misled by a court decision in another case with similar circumstances. In other words, the errors happened but they were not Dr. Tate’s fault. In those circumstances, the Georgia Supreme Court said, And so an election in which the voters have fully, fairly, and honestly expressed their will is not invalid because the certificate of nomination of a successful candidate is defective through an omission of some detail. At 439 (emphasis supplied). The same approach was taken by the South Carolina Supreme Court in Taylor v. Town of Atlantic Beach Election Commission, 609 S.E.2d 500 (2005), also discussed in Chapter 3, where a candidate who finished far out of the running claimed that there were a number of irregularities, including the violation of the voters’ right to secrecy of the ballot. Twenty ballots were cast on sheets of plain paper on which the voter wrote the names of the candidates the voter wanted; in six instances, the voters signed the paper. The six voters did this because the polling place manager told them to. The supreme court decided that the ballots of those voters should not be rejected even though they left much to be desired in terms of secrecy of the ballot. 87 Jernigan is discussed in Chapters 1 and 4, and in Section A of this chapter. 108