The Role of Courts in Elections
How courts adjudicate election disputes, protect voting rights, and sometimes decide who wins.
Referees of Democracy
Courts play a critical role in elections: interpreting election laws, adjudicating disputes over results, striking down unconstitutional restrictions on voting, and resolving challenges to redistricting maps. In many countries, specialized election tribunals or constitutional courts handle these matters. Mexico's Electoral Tribunal, Brazil's Superior Electoral Court, and Kenya's Supreme Court all have jurisdiction over presidential election disputes.
The most famous judicial intervention in an election is Bush v. Gore (2000), in which the US Supreme Court halted a recount in Florida, effectively deciding the presidential election. The 5-4 decision remains deeply controversial. Courts have also played decisive roles in Kenya (2017, where the Supreme Court annulled the presidential election due to irregularities) and Austria (2016, where the constitutional court ordered a re-run of the presidential election due to procedural errors in mail-in ballot handling).