Chapter 2 CHAPTER 2 Election Results Stand Unless a Violation Materially Affects the Outcome Throughout this chapter two points will be made. In order to overturn the results of an election you must prove: 1. there were enough irregularities or illegal votes to change the result of the election, or 2. the irregularities or illegal votes were so widespread and flagrant as to make it impossible to determine how the election would have resulted if they had not occurred. There are various ways to say this, and different lawyers and judges have phrased these propositions slightly differently.24 But however the propositions are stated they are easier said than proven, as this chapter shows. A. A successful challenge must prove that irregularities changed the result of the election or resulted from fraud. The mandate that a successful challenge must prove that irregularities changed the result of the election or resulted from fraud is a long-standing legal tenet based on the principle that an election will not be invalidated by irregularities unless the irregularities materially affected the results of the election. Andrews v. Blackman, 59 So. 769 (La. 1912), where several major errors were committed by election officials nearly 100 years ago, is included in this chapter to demonstrate how deeply ingrained this principle is. On September 3, 1912, a Democratic Party primary election was held for the position of district judge for the Thirteenth Judicial District of Louisiana. The election district for the judgeship covered two parishes (counties): Rapides Parish and Grant Parish. Both parishes had several voting precincts. Wilbur F. Blackman, the incumbent, was declared the winner over James Andrews by 307 votes, having gotten 1,609 votes to Mr. Andrews’ 1,302 votes out of the 2,911 total votes cast. In other words, Mr. Blackman got 55% of the vote, and it was not a very close election. Nevertheless, Mr. Andrews sued to have the election declared null and void or, in the alternative, to have himself declared the winner, because of a number of irregularities that occurred during and after the election. • Some voters objected to using the official ballots, which were white, because they had detachable slips on which there was a number.25 In Grant Parish, election officials in some of the polling places instructed the voters to vote on sample ballots which were yellow but had no numbers on them. • 24 25 The Democratic Party committee chairman did not obtain all of the returns (the tabulation of the votes in each precinct) from the precincts after the balloting was over as he was required to under state law, because some of the returns mistakenly had been put into the ballot boxes, which had been resealed at the precincts. For example, one person I know would set out these propositions as: (1) the contestant would have prevailed but for the irregularities or frauds, or (2) that the defects were so pervasive that the adjudicator cannot determine the will of the electorate. The court surmised that the voters believed that their ballot could be identified by tracing the number on the slip to the number on the ballot. 19