Chapter 6 CHAPTER 6 Factual Findings of a Lower Court or Administrative Body Will Stand Unless They are Clearly Wrong The court decisions in this book were reached in cases that were on appeal. The initial decision in each case was made by an administrative body or by a trial court and was composed of two parts: a finding of the facts and a legal conclusion about what should be done about those facts. In every case, at least one person disagreed with the decision of the administrative board or the trial court and asked a reviewing court to come to a different conclusion. But, as in the law generally, there are limits to what an appellate court can do when it is reviewing the decision of an administrative body or a lower court in a case resolving an election dispute. A. The scope of a court’s review is limited. The limited scope of an appellate court’s review determined the outcome of many of the cases that we discussed in earlier chapters, especially where we focused on the procedural or administrative issues that were involved in those decisions. Now we will concentrate on how the courts in some of those cases handled the issues before them given the scope of their review. The scope of review was stated succinctly in Knight v. State Board of Canvassers, 374 S.E.2d 685 (S.C. 1988), which was discussed in Chapters 2 and 3. Carl Knight lost the election for sheriff in Dorchester County, South Carolina. He filed a lawsuit against the State Board of Canvassers saying that the count of the absentee ballots was adjourned for the night and picked up again the next morning in violation of a law that required the count to be conducted without interruption. However, the trial court affirmed the results of the election, and Mr. Knight appealed to the South Carolina Supreme Court. On appeal, the supreme court said, This Court’s scope of review of decisions of the State Board of Canvassers is limited to corrections of errors of law; findings of fact will not be overturned unless wholly unsupported by the evidence. At 686. Ultimately, the supreme court decided that the State Board of Canvassers’ support of the absentee ballot count did not constitute an error of law, even though the counting procedure did not meet all the technical absentee ballot requirements. B. A reviewing court may not substitute its views for the opinion of an administrative body or lower court. The concept of limiting a court’s scope of review is similar to the approach that courts take when they presume that official actions and election results are valid. Both approaches recognize the authority, proximity and expertise of the first-level actors. We have noted earlier in this book that the presumption of correctness given to official actions and decisions creates a very difficult burden of proof for plaintiffs 121