In Salem's Ward 6 City Council Race, Every Vote Counted

SALEM, MA — There's no reliable count of how many local elections have been decided by the single vote in U.S. history. But if there was, Megan Riccardi's 611-610 victory over Jerry Ryan in Tuesday's Ward 6 race for Salem City Council would be added to what would be, presumably, a very short list. Ryan said after unofficial results were released that he will ask for a recount.

Massachusetts law allows for candidates in local elections to petition for a recount regardless of the margin of the initial count. In statewide and district-level elections, recounts are only allowed if the margin of victory is less than 0.5 percent of the total number of votes cast. Ryan must file his petition for a recount within six days of the election.

In the meantime consider that, for once, the "every vote counts" mantra of every middle school civics teacher actually rang true in Salem Tuesday night. How rare are one-vote victories? In the more than 18,000 races for the U.S. House of Representatives since 1900, only one race has been decided by one vote. That was in 1910, when Democrat Charles B. Smith ousted incumbent De Alva S. Alexander in Buffalo, NY's congressional district race by a count of 20,685 to 20,684. The recount later slightly raised Smith's margin of victory.

Closer to home, Democrat Marcus Morton received the required majority by a single vote in the 1839 Massachusetts governor's election. Had Morton not gotten that one extra vote, the race would have been decided by the state legislature which, at the time, was controlled by the Morton-hating Whigs. At the time, Massachusetts governors served one-year terms and Morton lost his 1840 re-election bid.

Morton won the general election in 1842 but did not secure the majority. When the vote went to the state legislature, he won by a single vote. The two, single-vote victories resulted in him being given the nickname "Landslide" for the remainder of his political career.

Some states have seen elections end in a tie, and most states have codified how ties are broken. Wyoming Governor Mike Sullivan broke a tie in a state legislature race in 1994 by drawing a ping pong ball from a cowboy hat. In Nevada, Democrat R.J. Gillum won his 2002 race for the Esmeralda County Commission by drawing a jack of spades from a deck of cards, which was better than Republican Dee Honeycutt's jack of diamonds.

The same tie breaker was used in 2011, when Linda Meisenheimer drew a king to beat Tanya Flanagan's five to win a North Las Vegas city council primary. Neither candidate would agree to pay $600 for a recount, and Meisenheimer ended up losing in the general election.