The Resolution of Election Disputes: Legal Principles that Control Election Challenges B.5. Follow the letter of the law The Logic case illustrates how careful you have to be if you are initiating a challenge to an election. It may seem that the Logic decision defies logic because it penalizes a candidate for violating a requirement whose object (notifying Mayor Kieck of the appeal so he could protect his interests) was accomplished anyway: Mayor Kieck knew about the appeal and had taken steps to protect his interests (he intervened in the lawsuit). One explanation for this seemingly anomalous result lies in the fact that the court was examining whether it had jurisdiction to intrude in decisions affecting election results. Courts are reluctant to disturb election results, and courts will be very strict in determining whether a plaintiff has done all he or she was required to do in bringing the court into an election dispute.7 By the same token, courts will not go beyond the statutory requirements in determining whether a plaintiff has met the requirements for bringing an election challenge. The inadequate service of summons was one of the grounds claimed by Jessie Pearl Curtis when she filed a motion to quash the summons and dismiss the appeal in Jernigan v. Curtis, 622 S.W.2d 686 (Ky. App. 1981). Patsy Jernigan had filed the lawsuit to void the results of the May 26, 1981 primary election for the Monroe County, Kentucky, Circuit Clerk of Court, after she had lost to Ms. Curtis by four votes out of 4,607 total votes cast. The summons had been delivered to Ms. Curtis by Ms. Jernigan’s lawyer. Ms. Curtis’s motion to dismiss said that the summons had to have been served by the sheriff or someone else who was authorized to serve a summons. But the statute for serving a summons did not mention who should serve the summons. The statute just said that the summons could be personally served, a copy could be left at the person’s house with a family member over 16 years old, or a copy could be posted on the door of the person’s house. In other words, the statute only talked about how a summons should be served. The court concluded, It would appear that since the contest was filed and the summons issued within the time period required by the statute and since the contestee did receive actual service of the summons, the contestee cannot complain of any technical defect if indeed there was one. At 688 (emphasis supplied). Here, in contrast to Logic, Ms. Curtis was personally served, and the service was not different from the procedure specifically spelled out in the statute. Because the plaintiff did all she needed to do to under the statute to perfect her lawsuit, she succeeded in bringing the election dispute under the jurisdiction of the court. But even if a candidate fails to follow the required steps to file an election challenge, he or she will not be prevented from having his or her day in court because of circumstances beyond his or her control—especially if, as in Jernigan, those circumstances involve efforts by the candidate’s opponent to hide an attempt to steal the election (see section C below). Even where the court’s jurisdiction hinged on whether an action was in compliance with a state statute, being in substantial compliance with a statutory requirement was sufficient for Frederick I. Taft to comply with a requirement that a petition to contest an election “shall be accompanied by a bond with surety to be approved by the clerk of the appropriate court in a sum sufficient, as determined by him, to pay all the costs of the contest.” In Taft v. Cuyahoga Board of Elections, 854 N.E.2d 472 (Ohio 2006), Mr. Taft and Richard M. Bain both received 1,124 votes in the November 8, 2005 election for the fourth council seat in the City of Pepper 7 Later in this chapter, we will see that once a court has jurisdiction, judges are equally reluctant to disturb official decisions regarding ir- regularities that have occurred in election procedures. 8