Iowans who wondered during the course of the presidential election contest whether their State has ever witnessed see-saw court battles over election results need not look far into the past. In a very hotly contested campaign for a seat on the Keokuk County board of supervisors, the Iowa Supreme Court was called upon in 1978 to cull through disputed ballots and declare a winner. An official canvass after the election showed Francis P. Devine, a write-in candidate, had defeated the incumbent Raymond James Wonderlich, by a razor-thin margin of two votes – 2655 to 2653. Wonderlich challenged the validity of a number of Devine’s write-in votes, and both a “contest court” and the Keokuk County District Court threw out a sufficient number of the write-in votes to conclude that Wonderlich was the winner by over a 100 vote margin. In a turn-about now familiar to those who watched the 2000 presidential election process, the Iowa Supreme Court reversed and declared Devine the winner.
Some of the language used by the Iowa Supreme Court in deciding the Keokuk County supervisor’s race of 1996 would sound familiar to much of the country:
Because an election contest involves the right of qualified voters to have the ballots counted for the candidate of their choice, the right of franchise is at stake. The right to vote is a fundamental political right. It is essential to representative government. Any alleged infringement of the right to vote must be carefully and meticulously scrutinized . . . . [B]ecause the right to vote is so highly prized, these statutes must be construed liberally in favor of giving effect to the voter’s choice, and every vote cast enjoys a presumption of validity . . . . As a general rule, if a voter affixes any mark to his ballot which fairly indicates his intention to vote for a particular candidate, the vote should be counted for the candidate unless a mandatory provision of the election law is violated.
With those principles in mind, the Iowa Court concluded that the District Court had failed to count a total of 164 ballots which should have been treated as valid.
Although the contested write-in ballots presented the Court with a wide variety of alleged defects to consider, those ballots fell into four main categories. One was a group of 108 “sticker” ballots – ballots on which the voters had affixed a pre-printed sticker containing Devine’s name and the words “for member Board of Supervisors – Term commencing 1977". These ballots were challenged on the ground that they contained words other than Devine’s name, as well as on the ground that many of the stickers were not affixed to the proper part of the ballot. The second group involved 77 ballots on most of which the surname “Devine” only, or the name “F. Devine” was written in. These ballots were challenged on the ground that the voter might have intended to vote for one of the other 10 “Devines” who lived in the District, including the write-in candidate’s 70 year-old aunt. Third was a group of ballots in which numerous other “name variations” appeared, including many imaginative apparent mis-spellings of “Francis”. Fourth was a group of 51 ballots which involved miscellaneous other claimed irregularities. In the case of both of the latter groups, the claim was made that the voter’s intent was not sufficiently clear from the ballots in order for them to be counted.
The Court’s opinion discussed each category of disputed ballots separately, relying in the first instance on Iowa statute and in many other instances on case precedent of this State and others in determining which ballots to count. When those authorities failed the Court, it fell back on “common sense and general principles” to govern its review of the ballots. In total, the Iowa Supreme Court found that 173 of the ballots thrown out by the district court should have been counted, awarding 164 of those ballots to Devine and 9 of them to Wonderlich. That finding caused the Supreme Court to reverse the district court and declare Devine the winner, over one year and seven months after the election was held.
The decision is silent as to how the Keokuk County Board of Supervisors managed its affairs during the considerable period of time while the election was under review. However, the Supreme Court’s ruling contains no indication that the ballot dispute caused any lasting damage to the financial affairs or social fabric of the County. Iowans might take some comfort from that fact as they look forward to the inauguration of our next president.
