A returning officer acted unlawfully when he opened sealed ballot papers while investigating a discrepancy in an election count.
But acting Attorney General John Quinn says lawyer Simon Cain will not be prosecuted for his actions.
Mr Quinn carried out an inquiry after it emerged that 206 votes went uncounted in the Ayre and Michael constituency on election night.
That discrepancy - which did not affect the overall result - was discovered following concerns raised by candidate Louise Whitelegg.
The acting Attorney General’s report into the incident reveals that Mr Cain initially assured Ms Whitelegg that there he had ‘no doubt whatsoever about the accuracy of the count’.
But having checked the counting sheet over the weekend, she emailed the returning officer and the Cabinet Office the following Monday saying she could not get the numbers to add up. Later that day, it had been confirmed that 206 votes - 103 ballot papers - had not been counted.
Then against the advice of the government advocate, Mr Cain took it upon himself to open the sealed ballot papers to discover where the discrepancy lay.
He found a total of three piles of 11 ballots that should have been two piles of 10, two piles of 10 that had not been counted at all,five ballots which had escaped from any bundle, and one pile that had been miscounted with the counting sheet showing 121 when the actual number was 196.
Of the 103 uncounted ballot papers all had a vote for winning candidate, and now chief minister nominee, Alfred Cannan – giving him 103 extra votes.
There was one extra vote for second-placed Tim Baker, 27 for Carlos Philips and 75 for Louise Whitelegg.
Mr Cain also made a mistake writing down the total number of ballots cast, putting 784 rather than 748 for Kirk Michael, giving a total of 3,228 instead of the correct figure of 3,192.
The acting Attorney General concluded that he was satisfied with Mr Cain’s explanation that the missing 103 ballot papers were the result of human errors while counting and as a result of there not being in place a robust means of reconciling the numbers of ballots.
‘Although mistakes can be made when counting votes, a robust reconciliation process would in my view have captured these errors,’ said Mr Quinn.
The returning officer and his deputy had apologised profusely for the error.
But Mr Quinn also found that Mr Cain had committed an unlawful act by opening the sealed packets of counted and rejected ballot papers. Regulations state that counted and rejected ballot papers must be sealed up after the count and must not be subsequently reopened to avoid an obvious risk of corruption.
He concluded, however, it would not be in the public interest to prosecute him for such a breach. He was satisfied that Mr Cain had opened the sealed papers out of good intentions and not in any way to seek to corrupt the process.
The acting Attorney General said there were ‘clearly lessons to be learned’.