Chapter 1 after the election, Mr. Zupsic filed an election contest nunc pro tunc.11 The Pennsylvania statutes required that election contests be filed within 20 days of the election. Mr. Zupsic said he should be entitled to proceed even though he filed his contest long after the 20 day post-election period because he only found out about the irregularities when the votes were tabulated on January 5. The trial court agreed with Mr. Zupsic. It then found that sometime between November 2 and January 5, somebody opened the ballot boxes and marked enough ballots to change the election result in Ms. Laughlin’s favor.12 Most of the differences between the vote counts on November 2 and January 5 were in five of the precincts, and all the differences were only in the Zupsic-Laughlin race; the votes for the candidates in the other contests on the ballot were unchanged. The trial court also found that there was no way to determine exactly how many ballots were altered, and so the trial court concluded that the election should be set aside and a special election held. Ms. Laughlin appealed that decision to the state supreme court. Before deciding what to do about either the discrepancy in the ballot counts or the trial court’s conclusions about the number of ballots that were altered, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court had to determine whether Mr. Zupsic followed the appropriate steps in filing his challenge. This was the same approach taken with Mr. Taylor’s election challenge in South Carolina, Mr. Logic’s election challenge in Wisconsin and Ms. Pullen’s election challenge in Illinois. To make this determination, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court had to answer two questions. First, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court decided that Mr. Zupsic did not have to file his challenge by November 22 (20 days after the election). It said, …where a petitioner does not learn of a problem with the election until the filing period has expired and his ignorance is not due to any “fault or dereliction” on his part, the Court has allowed the petitioner to seek relief nunc pro tunc. 670 A.2d at 635-636. In reaching this decision, the supreme court relied on two earlier Pennsylvania cases where the fact situations showed: • • The candidate did not know that his name was misspelled by an election official on a return sheet that was sent to the county board, and The candidate did not know election officials made a mistake in writing the vote totals on the return sheet (the totals were correct on the tabulation sheet). But Ms. Laughlin did not give up. Next, she argued that Mr. Zupsic was at the recount on December 9 when the difference between the recount results and the initial results became known. Since Mr. Zupsic should have been aware of the problem then, he should not be allowed to wait another month, to January 10, before bringing his election challenge. Ms. Laughlin counted the statutory 20 days from December 9 and said that even under this generous interpretation of the requirement, Mr. Zupsic missed the extended December 29 deadline by 12 days. Nunc pro tunc is defined as “A phrase applied to acts allowed to be done after the time when they should be done, with a retroactive effect, i.e., with the same effect as if regularly done.” Black’s Law Dictionary 489 (2d Pocket Ed. 2001). 12 There was an increase in the number of overvotes—marks for Ms. Laughlin on ballots that already had been marked for Mr. Zupsic— which spoiled those ballots and therefore decreased the number of ballots recorded for Mr. Zupsic. There also was a decrease in the number of undervotes—marks for Ms. Laughlin were put on ballots that previously had no marks for either Mr. Zupsic or Ms. Laughlin— which increased the ballot total for Ms. Laughlin. 11 11