The Resolution of Election Disputes: Legal Principles that Control Election Challenges were fraudulently cast, and no claim that the voters did not reside in the 55th Representative District. The court further reasoned that it could be assumed that the ballots were cast in the voters’ proper precinct because voters can get ballots only after satisfying an election judge that they are qualified to vote in that precinct. Moreover, there were explanations of how ballots for one precinct could get mixed up with ballots for another precinct. The supreme court concluded, Although these ballots were counted in the wrong precinct, they were cast by voters who resided in the 55th Representative District and who were entitled to vote for one of the candidates involved in this contest. Any error was attributable to the election officials and not the voters. We conclude that otherwise qualified voters should not be deprived of their right to have their votes counted simply because of error on the part of election officials. At 603 (internal citation omitted) (emphasis supplied). But voters who live in one district and cast their ballots for candidates in another district are not entitled to have their votes counted. This was true of the four voters who wrote on their ballots the name of a precinct outside of the 55th Representative District. The supreme court said these voters “had no right to cast a vote for one of the candidates in this election…the voters here were not qualified to vote for the office in question. Consequently, their votes may not be counted.” At 603 (emphasis supplied). In assessing other irregularities in the case the supreme court said: • • • • It was allowable to count some votes on the punch-card ballots that did not have the holes punched through completely, leaving the paper in the hole partially depressed or hanging by an edge. The trial court was wrong to disallow a visual inspection of the ballots that could not be read by the automatic tabulating machine, even though the statute says that punch card ballots shall be recounted on a tabulating machine; the supreme court interpreted that statute as directory. As to 77 ballots on which election judges erroneously wrote a number corresponding to the number on the voters’ application for a ballot, no mandatory provision of the election code was violated because the provisions requiring secrecy of the ballot prohibited voters, but not election officials, from marking a number on the back of the ballot, and because the mark must be made with the intention of violating the secrecy of the ballot, not by mistake. Ms. Mulligan could not contend that one ballot was lost when the ballot totals for two recounts were one ballot less than the ballot total for the another recount, because Ms. Mulligan had stipulated that all the ballots had been preserved between the election and the trial (even though she wrote a caveat on the stipulation as to the precinct in question), and she did not object to the trial court’s recitation of the total vote. After all of the Illinois Supreme Court’s reasoning and analysis, the vote between Ms. Pullen and Ms. Mulligan remained tied. The Illinois Supreme Court then sent the case back to the trial court for a visual inspection of the 27 ballots that the supreme court decided the trial court had erroneously decided not to examine. The trial court concluded that seven of those ballots looked like they had been punched for 64