The Resolution of Election Disputes: Legal Principles that Control Election Challenges But after all the analysis, the Mississippi Supreme Court concluded that even if the affidavit balloting provision were to be read to require that those ballots be initialed, “the initialing provision would be directory as to that statute. We have on many occasions held that technical irregularities will not vitiate an election where there is no evidence of fraud or intentional wrongdoing.” At 1192 (emphasis supplied). If the integrity of a ballot is unquestioned, there is no good reason to disenfranchise a voter for some technical aberration beyond his control… [I]f there had been even a hint of unseemliness associated with the ballots at issue, then even a technical irregularity might have rendered them void…the absence of initials on the twenty-eight contested ballots do not render the ballots invalid under our election code. At 1193. Then the court made short work of the complaint that six affidavit ballots were improperly opened by poll workers. The parties stipulated that the six affidavit ballots were opened after the polls closed, were put back in their envelopes, were delivered to the county election commission and were kept separately; in addition, they agreed that two of the ballots, found to be cast by unregistered voters, were not counted. The parties also stipulated that there was no question about the integrity of the ballots; the legality of the ballots was unquestioned except for the way that they were opened. With no evidence of fraud or wrongdoing, the Mississippi Supreme Court followed its prior cases stating that technical irregularities will not void the ballots. We see no reason to disenfranchise innocent voters because of a technical irregularity which occurred long after their votes were cast. At 1194. In Wilbourn, the mandatory/directory analysis led the court to determine that the initialing of the ballots was only a technical requirement as applied to the facts of the case. But in Johnson and Fultz, no such analysis was necessary because the statute was ruled to be mandatory—based on the importance of initialing to the integrity of the ballot—and the officials’ failure to comply with the initialing requirement led to the invalidation of the uninitialed ballots. Election officials are required to initial ballots in order to ensure the integrity of elections, and in states where the initialing is required, the failure of election officials to initial the ballots will not easily be dismissed as a mere technical irregularity. E.2. Handling Ballots: Technical irregularities in counting ballots do not void an election unless they change the results. Another case—Knight v. State Board of Canvassers, 374 S.E.2d 685 (S.C. 1988)—demonstrates that an irregularity in the way the ballots are counted also can give rise to the conclusion that a statute is directory. Knight was mentioned in Chapter 2 where the South Carolina Supreme Court was quoted as saying, “mere technical irregularities or illegalities are insufficient to set aside an election unless the errors actually appear to have affected the result of the election.” Carl Knight lost the election for sheriff in Dorchester County, South Carolina. He filed a lawsuit against the State Board of Canvassers saying that the count of the absentee ballots was adjourned for the night and picked up again the next morning, in violation of a law that required the count to be conducted without interruption. However, the trial court affirmed the results of the election, and Mr. Knight appealed to the South Carolina Supreme Court. 68