Chapter 3 card. The Democratic and Republican Parties had printed and mailed out absentee ballot request forms to registered voters of their respective parties. The Democratic Party’s forms had a place for the voter’s registration number (some forms even had the voter’s number on them), but the Republican Party’s forms did not have the number on them, or a place for it, or an instruction to the voter to put the number on the form. Thousands of requests for absentee ballots using these forms were submitted by voters to the office of the Supervisor of Elections. Realizing their error, Republican Party operatives set up shop in the supervisor’s office and, using her equipment, added voter registration numbers to Republican voters’ absentee ballot request forms. After the Republican Party operatives were done, the supervisor accepted the amended Republican voters’ absentee ballot requests and mailed absentee ballots to those Republican voters. The Democratic voters’ forms were in order, and those Democratic voters got their absentee ballots too. The plaintiffs in Jacobs wanted all absentee ballots invalidated where voter registration numbers had been added to the ballot request forms. If this was done they claimed, the election results in Seminole County should be nullified. This is a case where the Florida Supreme Court agreed totally with the trial court, and the Florida Supreme Court’s decision is, in the main, a reprint of the trial court’s decision. The trial court began its recitation of the facts after quoting the applicable principles from Boardman. It found that the Florida statutes said that an applicant for an absentee ballot must furnish his or her voter registration identification number as one of nine required items of information. But while the statutes said that the failure to supply the voter’s name, address and signature voids the ballot, the statute did not say that the failure to supply the other items of information, including the voter registration identification number, voids the ballot. Accordingly, that requirement was deemed directory, not mandatory, and the absence of that information did not invalidate either the absentee ballot request forms on which the information was added by Republican Party operatives, or the absentee ballots that were cast by the voters who used those forms. The plaintiffs also had claimed that the supervisor of elections gave disparate treatment to the political parties when she allowed only the Republican operatives to camp out in her office and use the office equipment. The trial court disagreed, however, finding there was no disparate treatment because there was no need for the Democrats to use the supervisor’s office to change the Democratic voters’ absentee voter application forms. There was no evidence that the Democrats had made, and been denied, a request similar to that of the Republicans. Nor was there any evidence that the voters whose registration numbers were added to their applications were not qualified, registered voters. In addition, there was no evidence of fraud, gross negligence or intentional wrongdoing in connection with any of the absentee ballots. Accordingly, this was a classic case where something obviously went wrong in the election procedures, but the statute governing the procedures was read as directory, not mandatory, because the errors were technical and the voters affected were qualified voters whose ballots had been innocently cast. The Florida Supreme Court affirmed the judgment of the trial court, finding that the plaintiffs were entitled to no relief. The trial court’s opinion also stressed the role of the court as to finding the facts and applying the law in deciding the election contest in an apolitical forum. This was important because the 2000 Presidential election was so close that the difference made by the inclusion or exclusion of the votes from Seminole County could have changed the outcome of the election. Judge Clark began her opinion by saying, 59