The Resolution of Election Disputes: Legal Principles that Control Election Challenges The purpose of a contest of election is to establish specific legal grounds upon which to set aside the results of an election. Significantly, this decision in this case may not be rendered for the purpose of sending a message to the community, a political party or the Seminole County Supervisor of Elections or the Seminole County Canvassing Board. This court decides this case, like any other lawsuit, under the fundamental principles of judicial restraint and judicial independence, and the ruling is necessarily based on existing statutory and case law and on the facts as they were developed during the trial of this matter…Where ascertainable, this court must give effect to the will of the people who voiced their political choices by casting their votes on November 7, 2000. Judge Clark then set out the principle underlying the body of election law as she saw it. An accurate vote count is one of the essential foundations of our democracy. The very purpose of election laws is to obtain a correct expression of the intent of the voters, without imposing unnecessary and unreasonable restraints on that right. Jacobs v. Seminole County Canvassing Board, Case Number CL 00-2816, slip op. (2d Cir. Leon County, Fla., December 8, 2000) (emphasis supplied). This is not to say that Judge Clark and the Florida Supreme Court ignored the extra-legal actions of the Seminole County Supervisor of Elections in allowing her office to be used as an adjunct of the Republican Party. The Florida Supreme Court said, We especially note, however, that at the conclusion of its order, the trial court found that the Supervisor of Elections of Seminole County exercised faulty judgment in first rejecting completely the requests in question, and compounded the problem by allowing third parties to correct the omissions on the forms. Nothing can be more essential than for a supervisor of elections to maintain strict credibility in the outcome of the election. We find the Supervisor’s conduct in this case troubling and we stress that our opinion in this case is not to be read as condoning anything less than strict adherence by election officials to the statutorily mandated election procedures. At 524 (emphasis in the original). In making this statement, the supreme court cited to the similar language at pages 725-726 of Beckstrom. D. Leading case III: The facts of Pullen v. Mulligan. The mandatory/directory dichotomy is well defined by another of the leading cases in the area, Pullen v. Mulligan, 561 N.E.2d 585 (Ill. 1990). The facts of Pullen were set out in Chapter 1 to demonstrate that challenges to an election must be within the dictates of the written election laws. To summarize, Penny Pullen lost to Rosemary Mulligan by 31 votes in the March 20, 1990 primary election for nomination as the Republican Party candidate for the 55th District of the Illinois House of Representatives. Ms. Pullen filed an election contest in the Cook County Circuit Court, alleging a number of irregularities. Ms. Mulligan claimed that other irregularities occurred in the vote count and asked the court to dismiss Ms. Pullen’s petition. After a recount, the judge ruled that some ballots should be counted, while others should not, and the two candidates were tied. Ms. Mulligan won the nomination by a flip of a coin. 60