The Resolution of Election Disputes: Legal Principles that Control Election Challenges The New Jersey Supreme Court found that a number of facts in the case were important, including testimony indicating that voters may have been dissuaded from voting because of confusing instructions for casting write-in ballots, the relatively large number of undervotes in the races for mayor and council seats, i.e., “missing votes,”49 and the fact that the mayoral race would have been won by Ms. Gray-Sadler had the rejected ballots been counted. These facts led the supreme court to conclude that there was a strong possibility that enough of those “missing votes” were caused by the confusing instructions. This assumption led to another: that because Sturgis and Geiger would have lost by about ten votes if the known number of voided write-in votes were counted, only a small number of additional “missing votes” (about which no hard evidence existed) would have changed the election. Based on these assumptions, the supreme court concluded that Sturgis and Geiger met the statutory requirement for successfully contesting the results of the council election, saying, “The standard we apply is one of reasonable certainty as opposed to absolute certitude.” At 1110. Gray-Sadler is an unusual decision. It is unclear why the New Jersey Supreme Court deviated from the general rule that courts will not draw inferences about irregularities from other inferences. The lesson to be learned is that courts sometimes will enunciate standards in unusual ways to avoid what they perceive as an injustice in a particular case. E. Voters can be required to disclose how they voted on an illegal ballot. In some instances, the task of matching an illegal ballot to a particular candidate is difficult, and in many instances it cannot be done. This occurs, for example, when an ineligible voter casts a ballot that is deposited in the ballot box with all of the rest of the ballots. This was the situation in Boardman v. Esteva, 323 So.2d 259 (Fla. 1975), where Henry Esteva claimed that 1,450 invalid absentee ballots had been commingled with the 1,939 valid absentee ballots and argued that therefore all absentee ballots should be thrown out (if this was done, he would win the election). The trial court disagreed with Mr. Esteva, as did the Florida Supreme Court, which found that Mr. Esteva did not carry his burden of proving that all 1,450 ballots had been irregularly cast. However, in other circumstances, this burden can be met without too much trouble, such as when a ballot has distinguishing marks and the voter can identify which ballot is his or hers. In such cases, the problem is often that—due to rules guaranteeing the secrecy of the ballot—voters are not allowed to publicly identify their own ballots. This was the situation faced by the trial court in the case discussed in Chapter 1 when Joseph Zupsic and Delores Laughlin ran for election to the office of state judge in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, on November 2, 1993. In re General Election for District Justice, 670 A.2d 629 (Pa. 1996), and after remand, 695 A.2d 476 (1997). When the votes were counted, Mr. Zupsic won a 36-vote victory over Ms. Laughlin, but a recount over a month later showed that Ms. Laughlin won by 42 votes. Between the two counts, the ballots were taken to the Beaver County courthouse in 156 ballot boxes, each with a red numbered seal put on at each of the precincts. Each ballot box was locked with an identical padlock, and each padlock could be opened with one of 160 to 170 keys. At the courthouse, election officials unlocked the ballot boxes, broke the seals and ran the ballots through the tabulating machines. Then the ballots were put back in the ballot boxes, the boxes were locked with the padlocks, 49 “Missing votes” means that voters did not cast votes for some offices, so that there were fewer votes cast for those offices than the total number of voters. 44