Chapter 6 The Iowa Supreme Court began by observing that, The contest is tried as a civil action…Appeal lies from the contest court to district court which hears the appeal in equity and determines anew all questions in the case…Hence our review is de novo. At 623. Thus, the Iowa Supreme Court did not limit itself to a review of legal errors but instead proceeded to review all of the evidence and law and then apply the law to the evidence to determine which of the marks on the ballots should have been considered. On the basis of this extensive review of all of the evidence in the case, the supreme court decided where the lower court had been right and where it went wrong. Once all the legitimate ballots were added up by the supreme court, Mr. Devine won the election by 20 votes, with 2,667 votes to Mr. Wonderlich’s 2,647 votes. But note that the process the Iowa Supreme Court went through—defining the law, then analyzing the facts in the light of the law and then reaching a conclusion on the basis of that analysis—is what the appeals court did in Keating. The juxtaposition of these two cases shows that the pivotal role of a reviewing court is to interpret the law in order to determine whether or not the trial court’s legal conclusion is against the manifest weight of the facts. Of course, whether the trial court’s decision will be in line with or against the manifest weight of the facts depends on how the law is defined. When a lower court decision is reversed, it is because the lower court got the law wrong—it was wrong in the way it interpreted the facts in light of the law. We know that most appellate courts do not conduct a de novo review of the lower court’s decision. But we also have seen that whether a reviewing court is acting de novo or not, depending on the state’s rules of procedure, the court will still define the law, and if the lower court’s decision on the law is not in line with the manifest weight of the facts in light of the way the reviewing court defined the law, then the lower court will be reversed. Boevers v. Election Board of Canadian County, 640 P.2d 1333 (Okla. 1981), which was discussed in Chapter 4, is another case where the outcome was reversed after the reviewing court corrected a misreading of state law and then applied the corrected law to the facts. Henry Boevers and Wayne Kremeier ran for the Republican Party nomination for county commissioner in District 1 of Canadian County, Oklahoma. After a recount, Mr. Kremeier was ahead of Mr. Boevers by one vote (228 to 227). Two ballots were at issue. One ballot had Mr. Kremeier’s name crossed out and an X placed in the box next to Mr. Boevers’ name. The other ballot had no mark in the box next to Mr. Kremeier’s name and a squiggly marking in the box next to Mr. Boevers’ name. The first mark was not counted because it was determined by the county election board to be a distinguishing mark prohibited under state law, and the second mark was not counted by the county election board because the board decided it was not one of the marks that a state statute said were acceptable. Mr. Boevers filed a lawsuit contesting the election, but the county judge declined to review the election board’s decision because a state law said that the election board’s recount decision was final in all cases. The Oklahoma Supreme Court disagreed, saying, 127