The Resolution of Election Disputes: Legal Principles that Control Election Challenges 294 A.2d 453. 294 A.2d 453 (Cite as: 294 A.2d 453) Page 3 (c) That a vacancy exists for a candidate for election to the office of Sheriff. The Governor by this proclamation then directed that the Androscoggin County Democratic Committee meet on July 20th to nominate a candidate for the office of Sheriff to be voted upon at the General Election to be held on Tuesday, the 7th of November, 1972. The proclamation then recited that a Certificate of the choice of said nominee was to be filed in the office of the Secretary of State forthwith. This Petition for Declaratory Judgment initiated by Barber followed. It prayed for a Court adjudication '. . . that Plaintiff was the duly nominated candidate of the Democratic Party for the office of Sheriff of Androscoggin County' and for remedial relief that the Court '. . . order the Secretary of State to place Plaintiff's name, and no other, on the ballot for the General Election as the said nominee of the Democratic Party.' In this case, therefore, the only issue raised for decision in appropriately justiciable form is whether the legal effect to be assigned to the outcome of a primary election actually held and the votes actually cast is that the plaintiff, Barber, was '. . . the person who receive(d) a plurality of the votes cast for nomination to . . . office, if the number equals or exceeds the number of signatures needed to place his name on the primary ballot by petition' -thereby allowing the plaintiff, Barber, to be regarded 'as nominated' pursuant to the specification of 21 M.R.S.A. s 1093(1). Recognizing that in factual reality the votes as actually cast by the electorate failed to give him the plurality required by 21 M.R.S.A. s 1093(1), plaintiff seeks to nullify entirely the legal effect of 6,135 ballots, of a total cast of 11,710, marked for another person, Robert W. Bonenfant, whose name appeared on the ballot and was thus offered to the voters during the course of the election as an ostensibly officially valid voting option; and in this manner plaintiff strives to have the 2,884 votes cast for him operate as the 142 plurality requisite under 21 M.R.S.A. s 1093(1). The asserted ground for such total obliteration of the legal effectiveness of 6,135 votes cast is that the noontime death, while *456 the primary election was in progress, of the person whose name was Robert W. Bonenfant for whom the 6,135 ballots had been marked suffices, ipso facto, to nullify absolutely all legal effectiveness of the total votes thus cast.[FN5] FN5. Plaintiff is forced to such 'all or nothing' position since it is manifest that in the present circumstances only speculation is possible concerning the actual subjective state of mind of any voter at the time he cast his vote, e. g. whether he was voting with or without actual knowledge that Robert W. Bonenfant had already died and whether, if he had such knowledge, what his purpose might have been in continuing to mark his ballot in favor of the deceased person. Further, there is no evidence in the case as to the number of persons who might have cast their ballots before or after a reasonable range of time surrounding the noon hour when Mr. Bonenfant died and on the basis of which a possible cut-off time might be attempted to be established on any retionally sustainable basis. The theory is that the death of a person renders him legally ineligible to be the recipient of an election certificate under 21 M.R.S.A. s 1095(1) and, therefore, ultimately, to take, or hold, the office involved. The argument is untenable. [1] Ineligibility to take, or hold, an office is a subject matter separate from, and, therefore, incapable of being controllingly dispositive of, the independent question of the legal effect to be given to votes as they have been actually cast in an election duly held and completed in conformity with the legal requirements directing the appropriate conduct of elections. [2] This latter issue must be evaluated, and decided, on the basis of the unique public policy considerations which derive from governmental concern to respect the will of the © 2006 Thomson/West. No Claim to Orig. U.S. Govt. Works.