Chapter 5 void and should not be considered when determining the results of an election if the voters have sufficient notice of the candidate’s death.91 The “English Rule” was characterized in Ingersoll v. Lamb, 333 P.2d 982, 984 (Nev. 1959)—a case quoted at length by the Arizona Supreme Court in Tellez—as concluding that “where a vote is cast for a candidate known to be dead the effect is ‘a deliberate intent to waste it’ and a ‘wanton’ misapplication of it…” But the Arizona Supreme Court said, The general rule which we think the better is that the votes cast for a deceased, disqualified or ineligible person are not to be treated as void or thrown away but must be counted in determining the result of an election as regards to other candidates where such deceased or disqualified person received the highest number of votes. At 108. Arizona’s statutes were not helpful in reaching this conclusion because they just said, “the person or persons receiving the highest number of legal votes shall be declared elected.” At 108, quoting the Constitution of the State of Arizona, Article 7, § 7, A.R.S. The law in the United States was not totally on the side of the analysis favored by the Arizona Supreme Court, but the supreme court characterized its view as the majority view in this country and found support in cases from Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Wisconsin, Corpus Juris Secundum and American Jurisprudence. Quoting further from Ingersoll, the Arizona Supreme Court set out the view in Tellez that …[W]e have concluded that petitioner, not having received the highest number of votes cast, is not entitled to receive a certificate of election. Votes cast for the dead candidate were not …to be thrown away but could be counted in support of a showing that the opposing candidate had not received a majority. This, in short, is the application of what has come to be known as “the American rule…” At 109-110. The remedy of having the county Democratic Party choose a replacement nominee was based on an interpretation of a state statute that said that vacancies “due to death, mental incapacity or voluntary withdrawal of a candidate after a primary election may be filled by the political party committee of the state, country, city or town…” The supreme court concluded that the words “after a primary election” modified only the words “or voluntary withdrawal of a candidate,” leaving a vacancy due to death before a primary election to be filled by “the political party committee” as the statute dictated. Four years later the Supreme Court of Maine reached a similar conclusion about the effect of a candidate’s death in Barber v. Edgar, 294 A.2d 453 (Maine 1972), stating as its premise: Ineligibility to take, or hold, an office is a subject matter separate from, and, therefore, incapable of being controllingly dispositive of, the independent question of the legal effect to be given to 91 Mr. Christian was the incumbent county treasurer and his death got a lot of media publicity. 115