Thirty-Second Congressional District of Pennsylvania Election Returns

Citations

• 256 Pa. 342
• 100 A. 825
• 1917 Pa. LEXIS 613

Syllabus

<p>Elections — Election returns — Discrepancy between talley sheets and certified returns — Correction—Computation — Practice, Supreme Court — Appeals.</p> <p>1. Where the tally sheets of an election are free from suspicion of fraud and the only error therein is an error of addition, the board of return judges may correct such error and base their returns upon the figures as shown by the corrected tally sheet.</p> <p>2. The tally sheets are as much part of the general returns required by law to be deposited with the prothonotary and by him presented to the court for purposes of computation, as the certified returns. They are alike complementary and together constitute one return.</p> <p>3. Where there was a discrepancy between the tally sheets and the returns certified by the election officers and it appeared that the tally sheet was free from erasures and properly kept, but that the footing was incorrect, and that the error was carried into the certificate of the election officers, the court did not err in failing to require the election officers to produce the election papers or to compute the election returns in accordance with the corrected figures shown by the tally sheet.</p> <p>4. On appeal from an order refusing a petition for the recount of the vote cast in an election district, the case comes before the Supreme Court as on a common law certiorari and the examination of the Supreme Court is confined to what is disclosed by the record, but it may examine the opinion filed by the court below for the purpose of determining whether the lower court acted upon legal grounds and within the discretion committed to it.</p>