The Resolution of Election Disputes: Legal Principles that Control Election Challenges by 186 votes, of Raymond Eugene Green (a state senator from the Houston area) as the Democratic candidate for the United States House of Representatives in a run-off primary election for the 29th Congressional District in Texas.50 The Democratic and Republican primary elections had been held on March 10, 1992, but none of the candidates in the Democratic primary election got a majority of the votes. So a primary run-off election between the two top vote-getters in the Democratic primary, Mr. Reyes and Mr. Green, was held on April 14, 1992. Texas law prohibited people who had voted in one party’s primary election from voting in another party’s run-off election. For example, those who had voted in the March 10 Republican primary were prohibited from voting in the April 14 Democratic primary run-off. The votes of such cross-party voters would be void. After Mr. Green’s narrow victory, Mr. Reyes hired an accounting firm to compare the names, voter registration numbers and precinct numbers of people who voted in the March 10 and April 14 elections. Based on the results of that comparison, Mr. Reyes submitted to the court a list of 429 people whom he claimed had voted in both the Republican primary and the Democratic run-off elections. In order to win his case, Mr. Reyes had to prove that (1) enough illegal votes were cast for Mr. Green to overcome Mr. Green’s 186-vote margin of victory and (2) Mr. Reyes received a majority of legal votes in the run-off election. Mr. Reyes called as witnesses 313 of the 429 voters to compel them to testify how they voted in the runoff election. The trial court found that there were 220 illegal votes for Mr. Green, 75 illegal votes for Mr. Reyes and 8 votes that were not illegal. This left Mr. Green with a 41-vote victory margin. But the trial court also found that there were 126 crossover voters whose votes could not be determined because, when they testified, they could not remember for whom they voted (10 of the 313 who testified), or they did not testify for various reasons. Both candidates put expert witnesses on the stand to testify to the probability that the majority of the unascertained illegal ballots were cast for the candidate’s opponent. The trial court concluded that the true outcome of the run-off election could not be ascertained. On appeal, Mr. Green argued that the trial court’s reading of the state law would result in voiding any close election because the existence of some illegal votes would taint the election. The appeals court disagreed, citing the state statutes that dealt with illegal votes. The statutes said that, first, illegal votes should be subtracted from the totals of the candidates who received them. If there was a clear winner after the illegal votes were subtracted, then that candidate was elected. If, after that subtraction, there were still illegal votes outstanding that could not be subtracted from a candidate’s total—because it could not be determined which candidate got the illegal votes—then the election was to be declared void if there were more undetermined illegal votes than the margin of victory in the election. In response to Mr. Green’s argument, the appeals court said that the law was not about close elections, but rather the law merely seeks to insure that the final election canvass is a clear reflection of the legal votes cast… [The statute] only comes into play where there were illegal votes cast which upon reasonable inquiry at an election contest cannot be attributed to either the contestant or contestee. At 210 (emphasis in the original).51 The appeals court recognized that the trial judge, in attempting to promptly determine the results of the election, required the illegal voters to reveal how they voted. Many of those voters were upset and angry because generally voters have a constitutional right to the secrecy of their ballot.52 The appeals court Mr. Green got 15,858 votes, and Mr. Reyes got 15,672 votes. We will focus on this aspect of Green v. Reyes again in Chapter 6, Section A. 52 The trial court gave the voters immunity from prosecution regarding their testimony about their illegal votes. 50 51 46