We’ve all heard the rare story of elections being decided by a handful of votes or by one vote, but how often do you hear about an election ending in a tie?
It happened in Georgia. In the small town of Blythe, a contentious city council race ended with the vote being a 50-50 split. Even after a recount, the result remained a tie.
Blythe is a town of about 700 residents and out of those 700 residents, about 425 are registered voters. In the city council race between John Daniel Martin and Judy Cordova, 150 people voted and each candidate received 75 votes.
That vote occurred May 22 and will be resolved in a runoff election between the two candidates July 24.
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But the tied vote isn’t the only intriguing part of this race. Martin was indicted on charges of vote buying and supplying alcohol to someone under age 21 during the March 20 election for the city’s mayor. He plead not guilty to the charges in April and remained an active candidate for the city council post. You can read more about that incident here.
In an additional twist, according to The Augusta Chronicle, the alcohol was purchased at the AM-PM store Cordova manages and Cordova initiated the complaint against Martin via a text to the Blythe Police department.
It may not have the money or the political power of the runoff for Governor, but this small town runoff has quite a backstory and serves as a lesson in the power of each individual vote.
