Susan Brown
Figure 1:
There is 120vac measured from both sides of the element wrt N, but 0vac measured from L1 to L2.
At this point, you can’t determine anything about which side the fault is on. (We have stipulated that the element is not faulty.)
Is current flowing? If not, what does that tell you about the general nature of the fault?
Figure 2:
The main point of these measurements is to figure out which side of the circuit is faulty. This is how we know that the fault is on the L1 side somewhere.