The Resolution of Election Disputes: Legal Principles that Control Election Challenges tion officials to prevent long lines at the polling place and to provide close-in parking constituted irregularities that prevented voters from casting their ballots? This was the question faced by the Iowa Supreme Court in In re Election Contest as to Watertown Special Referendum Election of October 26, 1999, 628 N.W.2d 336 (2001), a dispute about a referendum election on whether to rezone an area in Watertown, Iowa, from residential to commercial, and whether to vacate a portion of a city street, in order to allow the Prairie Lakes Health Care System to expand its main campus. There was one polling place used for the election in the city, which was in accordance with state law. The rezoning proposition passed by 34 votes out of 3,388, a margin of 1%, and the street closing passed by 60 votes out of 3,418, a margin of 2%. The local residents filed a lawsuit. They got affidavits from 104 people saying that they did not vote because the lines at the city’s one polling place were too long. There was evidence that people had to wait between 45 and 90 minutes to vote. Some people went to the polling place a few times during the day, only to find that the wait was the same length no matter when they showed up. The polls closed at 7 p.m. but it took until 8:30 p.m. for the 400 people in line at that time to vote. The parking problem seems less dramatic: some people had to park a block and a half from the polling place.36 The contestants in Watertown said that the special election was not a free and fair expression of the voters because of the way it was conducted. The Iowa Supreme Court, however, disagreed in a very brief opinion saying, The Court fails to see how long lines or inadequate parking equate to voting irregularities to the level of not being a “free and fair expression of the people.” Mere inconvenience or delay in voting is not enough to overturn an election. Without proof of a violation of state or local election law, there is no showing that the trial court’s findings are clearly erroneous. It is also true that before we conduct a “but for” analysis to determine whether the election outcome may have been different had those “disinfranchised” [sic] been able to vote, Contestants [sic] must show, as a prerequisite, that voting irregularities exist...While Contestants cited numerous alleged voting irregularities in their complaint, they failed to prove such irregularities at trial. At 339 (internal citations omitted). The supreme court left open the possibility that circumstances could be proven that would constitute irregularities sufficient to deprive the free and fair expression of the voter’s will, but it was clear that the contestants in Watertown did not prove them.37 The Iowa Supreme Court mentioned that a “but for” analysis would have been used in Watertown to measure whether the irregularities complained of changed the outcome of the election and therefore supported a decision to order that a new election be held. But we learned earlier from the Supreme Court of Louisiana’s decision in Valance that even if the words “but for” were not used, the challenger still had to prove that the result of the election had been changed by the irregularities complained of in order for a new election to be ordered. The Connecticut Supreme Court came to the same conclusion in Bortner v. Town of Woodbridge, 736 A.2d 104, 113 (Conn. 1999) saying, We conclude that [the statute] does not require a challenger, in order to secure a judicial order for a There appears to have been no evidence introduced as to any problems that the long lines and parking distance caused persons with disabilities. 37 The supreme court specially noted that the contestants did not prove how many potential voters left the lines without voting or how they would have voted, they did not offer evidence that anyone was turned away, and they did not make a claim that they were denied equal protection of the law or due process under the law. The supreme court also made a point of describing the manner in which dissuading people from voting might constitute voting irregularities, but stressed that no evidence of irregularities was presented or argued. 36 28