Chapter 3 to vote absentee and who did so in a proper manner. The substantial compliance test used by the trial judge comports with our conclusion that strict compliance with the statutory requirements for absentee balloting is not required to validate the ballots. At 269-270. C. Leading case II: The facts of Beckstrom v. Volusia County. Twenty-three years after Boardman came Beckstrom v. Volusia County, 707 So.2d 720 (Fla. 1998), where the Florida Supreme Court again had to determine which candidate won an election based on the absentee ballots. This time it was an election for Volusia County Sheriff. Gus Beckstrom lost by 2,890 votes, or 1.8% of the 156,914 total votes cast, to the incumbent sheriff, Robert L. Vogel. There were well over 8,963 absentee ballots cast.59 Mr. Beckstrom filed a lawsuit claiming that there was fraud in the ballot count by the Volusia County Canvassing Board. The trial court judge was plainly disturbed by the breadth of the Boardman decision. He found that the canvassing board acted with gross negligence during the ballot count. But, he said, under Boardman, courts must condone a “certain level of incompetence” by election officials that is just short of being intolerable. He also found that the canvassing board’s irregularities irreparably harmed the sanctity and integrity of the election process, and that the Boardman decision had become a “license for lawlessness by election officials.” But he found that the canvassing board had not committed fraud; that “there was a full and fair expression of the will of the people,” which was not affected by the canvassing board’s negligence; that there was enough compliance with absentee ballot laws to make the ballots legal; and that there was an accurate count of the absentee vote. The actions of the canvassing board that so upset the trial judge were many, but the primary error involved using a black felt-tip pen to mark over the voters’ marks on 6,500 absentee ballots. The absentee ballots were cardboard rectangles on which the voter was instructed to mark his or her choice using a number 2 pencil. To count the ballots, the county fed them through a machine that read the marks. The instructions that came with the machines said that if the machine could not read the marks on a ballot the officials were to mark a new ballot exactly the same way as the unreadable ballot was marked, and then feed the newly marked ballot through the machine. That way, the original ballot would be preserved for examination and, if necessary, a later hand count. The Volusia County Canvassing Board, instead, took a black felt-tip marker and marked over the voters’ marks on the original absentee ballot, obscuring the voters’ original marks. The board members then fed the marked-over ballots through the machine to be read. They did this 6,500 times. Other alleged errors included: • • • • • 59 accepting 1,463 absentee ballots that did not have the required voter’s signature or the required address of the person who witnessed the absentee voting, absentee ballots that were not accounted for, absentee ballots that were left unattended in the election superintendent’s office, absentee ballots that were opened by deputy sheriffs and other people who were not members of the canvassing board, without a canvassing board member present, and absentee ballots that were opened behind locked doors. The total number of absentee ballots is not stated in the Beckstrom decision. In the decision, the Florida Supreme Court notes various categories of absentee ballots that were challenged by Mr. Beckstrom, comprising 6,500, 1,000 and 1,463 absentee ballots. These ballots total 8,963. This means that there would have been well over that number of absentee ballots cast, assuming that Mr. Beckstrom did not challenge all of the absentee ballots. 55