London, in the 1980s, the successful candidate and his election agent had left out a bill for GBP 19 from the return of election expenses. This would have taken the cost of the campaign slightly over the legal limit. They had also failed to complete the official expenses return form correctly. The court refused to unseat the candidate but, as these errors had been proved, he had to pay all his own legal costs and three-quarters of the legal costs of the losing candidate who had brought the case – even though many other errors the loser had alleged in the expenses return were rejected. The bill was in the region of GBP 50,000. This system in relation to costs of electoral cases applies generally in systems with UK-inspired legislation (see for example section 28 of the Election Petitions Act of Jamaica). It can clearly inhibit people from bringing cases or defending them, but finding an alternative may be difficult. Unrestricted payment of legal costs out of public funds could lead to many more cases of vexatious litigation. Another related issue is right of audience – who is entitled to argue a case in the court hearing? Costs increase if representation in court by a qualified legal practitioner of some kind is required. d) Timeliness 365. Electoral judicial proceedings should be timely, that is, a decision should be reached promptly and expeditiously within the legally established periods or stages of the electoral process. A decision taken outside this time frame may be unfair, and would make it impossible to correct the damage done to some electoral rights. 366. Reasonable deadlines should be provided for bringing challenges (generally shorter than those for civil litigation and other branches of administrative law). These need to balance the time required by the person alleging harm by a particular electoral act or decision to take stock of its content and scope and to gather the evidence, on the one hand, against the need to obtain a timely resolution, given that electoral processes proceed in stages that cannot be changed or interrupted. Accordingly, the system should take into account the extremely short time periods of the various stages of the electoral process and the need for each to be completed before it is possible to move on to the subsequent ones. To give the EDRB time to process, hear and resolve the respective challenges correctly, a balance must be struck between the short electoral time frames, the right to a defence of the person or body against whom the complaint is made, and the imperatives related to the timely administration of justice. This requires efficiency in imparting electoral justice and satisfactory relations between the EDRBs and EMBs. In addition, it is in general a healthy practice of legal process to provide for short timescales for resolving the challenges that have been filed. 125 6. Principles and guarantees of EDR systems (cont.)