The Resolution of Election Disputes: Legal Principles that Control Election Challenges in election dispute cases. That is because the plaintiffs in these cases seek to attack those official actions or decisions. The South Carolina Supreme Court in Taylor v. Town of Atlantic Beach Election Commission, 609 S.E.2d 500 (S.C. 2005), demonstrated in a single paragraph the close relationship between the rules that apply to the scope of review and the presumption that official actions are valid. In municipal election cases, we review the judgment of the circuit court only to correct errors of law. Our review does not extend to findings of fact unless those findings are wholly unsupported by the evidence. We will employ every reasonable presumption to sustain a contested election, and will not set aside an election due to mere irregularity or illegalities unless the result is changed or rendered doubtful. In the absence of fraud, a constitutional violation, or a statute providing that an irregularity or illegality invalidates an election, we will not set aside an election for a mere irregularity. At 502 (emphasis supplied).93 It is the principal tenet of the scope of review that a reviewing court may not substitute its view of the case for the decisions made by the administrative agency or trial court whose decision is under review. This was stated clearly in Mirlisena v. Fellerhoff, 463 N.E.2d 115 (Ohio 1984), where John Mirlisena lost the election for the city council in Cincinnati, Ohio, to Sally Fellerhoff by 62 votes out of a total of 76,592 votes cast. He challenged a number of irregularities, including the decision of the board of elections about the location of a polling place. (Other aspects of this case are discussed in Chapters 1, 2 and 5.) As to this challenge the court said, It is certainly arguable that a better site could have been selected or that more work might have been done in selecting the site. However, petitioner has not shown that the site was located fraudulently or with deliberate intent to disenfranchise voters. “…The test for reversing a decision of a board of elections is not necessarily whether this court agrees or disagrees with such decision, but it is whether the decision of the board of elections is procured by fraud or corruption, or whether there has been a flagrant misinterpretation of a statute or a clear disregard of legal provisions applicable thereto.” At 188-119 (internal citation omitted) (emphasis supplied). C. The decision of an administrative body or lower court will not be reversed unless it is against the manifest weight of the evidence. There is a corollary to the tenet that a reviewing court will not substitute its view of the case for the decision of an administrative body or a trial court: a reviewing court will not reverse the decision of an administrative body or trial court unless that decision was against the manifest weight of the evidence. These tenets were pointedly addressed in Stapleton v. Nyhan, 1995 WL 809921 (Mass. Super. 1995). In 1994, William Stapleton was one of many people who signed a petition to recall Mary Claire Kennedy, the mayor of Lawrence, Massachusetts, who had won election by 15 votes the previous November. Under Massachusetts law, there were many steps that had to be taken to recall Mayor Kennedy, and most of those steps had to be taken quickly. Time periods for acts such as determining how many voters’ signatures were needed on the petitions, for submitting a petition to the board of registrars of voters, for 93 Part of the paragraph quoted here was set out in Chapter 3. Taylor also was discussed in Chapters 1 and 5. 122