The Resolution of Election Disputes: Legal Principles that Control Election Challenges straight ticket was voted) should count as a vote for the straight-party candidate. The instructions for marking the ballot, both inside the polling place and in sample ballots that had been distributed, were fairly long. Mr. McDonough challenged the election results by bringing his case before the New Hampshire Ballot Law Commission (BLC), where he claimed that counting the skipped individual races as votes for the straight-party candidates violated the election officials’ duty to ascertain the true choice of the voter. When the BLC ruled against him, Mr. McDonough appealed to the New Hampshire Supreme Court. The supreme court said that under the statute, [V]oters may vote for individual candidates, write in names of candidates, vote along straight party lines, and vote along split party lines. None of these voting methods is required. Nor, as we read the permissive statutory language, are these methods exclusive of one another. Thus, if a voter makes an appropriate mark for any candidate or office in substantial compliance with the…statute, the vote should be counted. * * * * [T]he principles guiding our inquiry in this case are as follows: (1) we will not void an election because of mere irregularities or technicalities in the form of a ballot, election or vote; (2) we strive to enfranchise voters by giving effect to all marks on the ballot; and (3) we strive to avoid diluting votes by counting as votes marks that were intended to indicate the voter’s intent to abstain. At 1028 (internal citations omitted) (emphasis supplied). The supreme court then decided that a voter’s intent to vote a straight ticket was clear where the voter voted for a straight party ticket and then left blank at least seven of the 12 individual races on the ballot. There were 172 ballots like that among the 269 ballots that Mr. McDonough challenged in the county attorney race. After subtracting those 172 ballots from the 269 ballots that Mr. McDonough had challenged, there were only 97 challenged ballots left. Even if all of those 97 ballots had been counted for Mr. McDonough and then subtracted from Mr. Coughlin’s 126-vote margin of victory, Mr. McDonough still would have lost to Mr. Coughlin by 29 votes.70 So Mr. McDonough lost his challenge. Looking at the ballot itself, the Supreme Court of Florida was able to decide quickly on one of the more notorious problems that occurred in the 2000 United States Presidential election by using the substantial compliance test. There was much publicity about the “butterfly ballot” used in Palm Beach County, Florida, on November 7, 2000. That ballot had two facing pages with the names of candidates on both pages. The names of the candidates on the facing pages were staggered so that each candidate’s name was a little above or below the candidate’s name on the facing page. Between the two pages there was a strip with holes, under which was the actual ballot cardboard rectangle. A voter would punch a hole in a cardboard to mark his or her choice. News reports quoted voters who were greatly concerned that they had punched the ballot for Pat Buchannan, the Reform Party candidate, instead of Al Gore, the Democratic Party candidate, on the facing page. 70 The supreme court’s opinion says that Mr. Coughlin would still win by a margin of 25 votes. Mr. McDonough had also claimed that the ballot instructions were so confusing that they interfered with voters’ fundamental right to vote. One of his witnesses was a psychologist who testified that the voter instructions would require at least three years of college to understand. But the supreme court said that the New Hampshire Ballot Commission determined that “‘although evidence was presented that the instructions were confusing and difficult to understand,’ this evidence was insufficient to demonstrate that voters did not understand the instructions…As the trier of fact, the BLC was free to reject the expert’s testimony in whole or in part.” At 1029. 76