Chapter 2 in the free and fair expression of their will, and where that has been accomplished it would be unreasonable to hold, in the absence of an express provision of law to that effect, that the interest of the community shall be sacrificed, the will of the electors set at naught, and the results, as to the candidates, defeated, because, in its accomplishment, or after its accomplishment, the agents under whose direction the election had been held, have failed to follow each and every formal direction prescribed for their guidance. At 772 (emphasis supplied). Mr. Andrews argued that Mr. Blackman’s nomination should not count because of a new law that added to the procedures required for conducting elections an amendment that said, “any nomination… shall be illegal, and the Secretary of State is prohibited from placing on the official ballot the name of any person…not nominated in accordance with the provisions of this act.” To this, the supreme court said, It seems to us, however, that the provision thus quoted has no bearing upon the question whether a primary election shall be avoided [sic] and annulled for the nonobservance of directory provisions of the law, when such nonobservance in no manner affects the fact that the electors entitled so to do have, in that manner, expressed their choice of a candidate. At 772 (emphasis supplied).27 Then, the supreme court made a statement that sums up the underlying question of whether to invalidate an election because of irregularities: It would, perhaps, be going to an extreme to say that, if no election is to be regarded as valid unless every person having any function to discharge in connection with it shall discharge such function according to the letter of the law, there will never be a valid election, unless it be confined to a very few well-informed persons. At 772. The extent to which irregularities must be shown when attacking election results makes the burden of proof very difficult because of the presumption for sustaining election results. The presumption in favor of sustaining a contested election can be overcome most readily by proving that the irregularities that occurred changed the result of the election. When Carl Knight lost the election for sheriff in Dorchester County, South Carolina, he filed a lawsuit against the State Board of Canvassers saying that absentee ballots that did not meet the state’s technical requirements were counted anyway and that the count of the absentee ballots was interrupted despite the fact that, under state law, it should have been continuous. The South Carolina Supreme Court said, [T]his Court will employ every reasonable presumption in favor of sustaining a contested election and…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. Knight v. State Board of Canvassers, 374 S.E.2d 685, 686 (S.C. 1988). 27 As was noted earlier, the distinction between mandatory and directory provisions is crucial to the resolution of election disputes and will be examined in depth in the next chapter. 21