Introduction No right is more precious in a free country than that of having a voice in the election of those who make the laws under which, as good citizens, we must live. Other rights, even the most basic, are illusory if the right to vote is undermined. Wesberry v. Saunders, 376 U.S. 1 (1964) An accurate vote count is one of the essential foundations of our democracy. The very purpose of elections laws is to obtain a correct expression of the intent of the voters, without imposing unnecessary and unreasonable restraint on that right. Jacobs v. Seminole County Canvassing Board, Case Number CL 00-2816, slip op. (2d Cir. Leon County, Fla., December 8, 2000, Judge Nikki Ann Clark) All formalities have an arbitrary edge. So long as these are reasonable and fairly knowable beforehand, their enforcement enhances the right facilitated, as when we turn away the voter three minutes late or deny one who delivers his ballot at his local tavern. Election contests are about formalities. Wilbourn v. Hobson, 608 So.2d 1187, 1196 (Miss. 1992) (Robertson, Justice, concurring) This is a book of stories about candidates who were sure they had won elections that they really lost, candidates who cheated to make sure they won elections, election officials who did not follow the rules and sometimes changed the outcome of elections, and voters who did not mark their ballots the way they were supposed to. The stories are told by the litigants in dozens of cases where judges applied legal principles to the facts in order to resolve election disputes that the candidates, election officials and voters caused. The stories and the legal principles they illustrate are strikingly similar across the United States. This is noteworthy because the individual states in the United States do not have a single, common set of election laws or methods for adjudicating election disputes. True, the states are all bound by the U.S. Constitution, and some topics have been preempted by federal laws, such as campaign financing in contests for federal office, which federal agencies can enforce. But the specific laws that control election procedures in the United States are found in the constitution, statutes and regulations of each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia; there is not a federal system in the United States for administering elections and adjudicating election disputes. The cases in this book were brought before a state’s lowest level board, commission or court, as the particular state’s law required. That board, commission or court decided whether there had been a violation of the state’s laws or regulations, and if so, what remedy was appropriate under state law. The cases then were appealed and eventually decided by the state’s appellate courts. (The punishment of an election officer, candidate or other person(s) who caused election irregularities would be the subject of a separate proceeding—apart from the election challenge—which could vary, from a job-related disciplinary hearing to a criminal prosecution and various proceedings in between.) Although states use a variety of methods to adjudicate election disputes, the legal principles set out in this book apply to cases throughout the country. Similarly, the method for adjudicating election disputes differs from country to country, but the basic principles still apply. In some countries, challenges to the election of a candidate or the conduct of an election are brought before an election commission which hears and decides the challenges in the first instance. Their initial decisions can be appealed to a higher-level election commission or to a court of regular jurisdiction. In other countries, the dispute is heard initially in a court. Those decisions are appealable to a higher court. xvii