Chapter 2 At 1139 (emphasis supplied). This is the same standard as that discussed earlier in this chapter. Then the appellate court looked at the direct proof Mr. Valence said he was prepared to offer had his lawsuit not been dismissed: • Seven voters filled out forms showing that they did not live in the City of Grand Isle, • One request for an absentee ballot was illegally witnessed by Mr. Rosiere, and • 12 voters’ signatures were forged. The appellate court held that these allegations about 20 ballots, if true, “are sufficient to state a cause of action requiring a trial on the merits concerning the allegations of forgery of ballots, nonresident voting… and illegal assistance of voters by the defendant, Rosiere.” At 1141. The court then remanded the case to the trial court to conduct further hearings. What if there were an election with widespread irregularities, as was true in Deffebach, but the irregularities directly affected the ballots, as was true in Valence?33 What level of proof would a plaintiff need to void an election? This question caused serious disagreement among the justices of the Supreme Court of Louisiana in Moreau v. Tonry, 339 So.2d 3 (La. 1976), appeal dism., 430 U.S. 925 (1977). Nearly 100,000 votes were cast during the 1976 Democratic Party primary election for the United States House of Representatives. The defendant, Richard Tonry, won the nomination. His opponent, James Moreau, brought suit to void the election.34 The trial court found that there were 43 forged signatures on the polling place sign-in books and that there were 315 more votes on the voting machines than there were signatures on the polling place sign-in books. A Louisiana statute said that “an election may be upset only if the one contesting the election can show that ‘but for irregularities or fraud he would have been nominated…’” At 4 (emphasis supplied). The trial court refused to annul the election because, among other things, it found that the discrepancies between the number of machine votes and the number of polling place voters were minimal (315 of 100,000 is three tenths of 1%). Mr. Moreau appealed. The court of appeal reversed the decision of the trial court, apparently agreeing with Mr. Moreau that, because the number of votes involved in the irregularities was greater than the margin of Mr. Tonry’s victory, the result of the election could not be determined. In reversing the trial court, the court of appeal annulled the election and left the nominee to be named by a Democratic Party committee. Mr. Tonry appealed. The Louisiana Supreme Court reversed the decision of the court of appeal. It made special note of the court of appeal’s finding that “‘no inference can be made that these illegal votes were cast for Tonry.’” At 4. It also noted the state law required a candidate to prove that “but for” the irregularities he or she would have won the election. Since Mr. Moreau could not prove that the illegal votes had been cast for Mr. Tonry, Mr. Moreau could not prove that “but for” the illegal votes he would have won the election. But the supreme court added that there was an alternative proof that a candidate could make in order to void an election: [I]f the court finds the proven frauds and irregularities are of such a serious nature that the voters have been deprived of the free expression of their will, the election will be nullified. Remember that in Deffebach 425 voters who did not present their voter registration certificates at the polls also did not sign a required affidavit before they voted. Therefore, the irregularity affected a polling place procedure, but did not constitute proof that the voters were not eligible to vote, or that the ballots they cast were tainted. 34 The Louisiana Supreme Court’s decision does not specify Tonry’s margin of victory over Moreau, nor does it give other facts about the election that usually are found in cases dealing with election disputes. 33 25