Discussion Main / DecidedByOneVote

Somehow, this was stuck in the description, so I pulled it. It certainly doesn't belong there.

• Edmund Ross pulled a type two when everyone else announced their votes on whether or not to kick out President Andrew Johnson before the trial was over. Ross went against the Republicans (his own party) and thus stopped a complete overhaul of the government and loss of democracy with a single vote.
• In the 2002 Irish general election, Dan Neville won a seat in the Dáil by just one vote. In the same election, one seat was lost by two votes, but won after a recount.
• Rutherford B. Hayes was elected President of the United States by one electoral vote after the highly disputed election of 1876.
• The British Labour government lost a vote of no confidence by one vote on 28 March 1979, leading to 18 years of Conservative rule. Notable because there were several MPs from small parties, or independents, who could have changed history drastically if they had accepted various desperate deals from the government.
• Women's suffrage in the United States was decided by one vote during Tennessee's ratification. Harry Burn's anti-suffrage vote would have made the tally 48-48, but decided on his mother's advice to vote suffrage. Tennessee's ratification provided the requisite number of states to ratify the 19th Amendment.
• Jim Walding won the New Democratic Party nomination by one vote in 1986, and was subsequently reelected to the Manitoba legislature. Two years later, he voted against his own government in a non-confidence motion, and the government was defeated by... a single vote.
• In 1842, Henry Shoemaker cast a controversial ballot (he'd customized it to put all the candidates he wanted on it) that led to the election of Madison Marsh as Indiana representative. The next year, Marsh cast the tiebreaking vote that put Edward Hannegan on the Senate (as was done at the time). Hannegan, in turn, was the deciding vote for the Mexican War (which led to California become United States territory) and Texas statehood. Hat trick.
• In 1949, West Germany's federal assembly had to elect a chancellor. 73-year-old Konrad Adenauer won - by, yes, exactly one vote. He then went on to remain chancellor for 14 years, claiming some of the most impressive election triumphs in (West) German history.
• This has probably happened quite often in British parliamentary history in the time of the rotten boroughs but the Gatting by-election of 1816 stands out. The constituency had three voters, the owner of the constituency, his absent son and their butler. The father nominated the son as a Tory candidate. Then the butler had a quarrel with the father and intended to stand for election himself, but the father refused to back him. The election went to the absent son with one vote against none.
• At the 2010 British general election, Michelle Gildernew won re-election by four votes (21,304 to 21,300) after three recounts.
• In the 1997 British general election, Mark Oaten won the Winchester division for the Liberal Democrats by two votes after several recounts and a lot of haggling. The defeated Conservative opponent Gerry Malone (a junior minister) successfully challenged the result in court, which ordered the election to be held again due to a procedural error. A by-election was held in which Oaten won by 21,556 votes.
• Christine Gregoire won the 2004 Washington gubernatorial race by 129 votes, after several recounts, the last of which was by hand.
• In the 2010 Dutch general election, the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy beat the Labour Party by one seat to become the largest party in the House of Representatives.
• The decision who should host the 2006 World Cup was decided by one vote amongst much controversy. It was down to South Africa and Germany as the contenders, both having the support of exactly one half of the 24 committee. In the expected case of a tie, the deciding vote would have been cast by FIFA president Sepp Blatter, who was known to support South Africa. Amongst some political pressure and a prank by German satire magazine Titanic, New Zealand representative Dempsey abstained, so the final outcome was 12-11 Germany. (Blatter then changed the rules for host application, making sure that South Africa would get the 2010 World Cup.)
• There was a proposed constitutional amendment in 1946 to ban the immigration of Japanese people to Brazil. It came down to a tie of 99 for-99 against, with Fernando de Melo Viana casting the decisive vote to reject the amendment.
• Type 3 occurred in the 2011 Switzerland parliamentary elections, where two candidates scored ''exactly'' the same number of votes in a popular election. The vote was eventually decided by sortition.
• Type 1 occurred in the 2012 Iowa caucus. Mitt Romney apparently squeaked a win over Rick Santorum by eight votes, but after recounting, Santorum won by thirty-four votes, which is still VERY close. Due to the way the USA's nomination system works, the race was treated as a tie.
• In the 2011 New Zealand general election, the electorate of Christchurch Central was tied after counting on election night, with 10,493 votes for each of Labour's incumbent Brendon Burns and National's Nicky Wagner. Two weeks later after the count of all the special votes, Wagner won with 45 votes (47 on recount).
  • In the same election, the election night count had National incumbent Paula Bennett 349 votes ahead of Labour's Carmel Sepuloni. When the official results came out, it changed to Sepuloni winning by 11 votes, and when Bennett requested a recount, it swung back to her winning by nine votes.
• No idea what type this one would go under... actually, it might be a fourth type. But in North Carolina in 2012, Governor Perdue vetoed a bill on fracking. Polls had consistently shown that about 80% of North Carolinians are against fracking, and pretty much only big business is for it. The fracking veto override was rushed through the House and Senate in a single day. During the voting, a House representative accidentally hit the wrong button, meaning to vote against fracking but instead voting for it. This was a one-vote makes the difference type situation. Immediately after it happened, she brought it to the attention of the House, but the House refused to change her vote because it would affect the outcome of the bill. Then the House Majority Leader used a political technique called a clincher that would prevent the veto override from being reconsidered.

Ignore this.

Ok, the Recess example. Wouldn't it be more likely for one of the girls (likely Gretchen herself) to abstain than either Mikey or Gus breaking faith or for an outside (and ineligible) boy producing an extra vote to yield the odd margin? (Mikey breaking faith (for this petty cause) would likely be out of Character. As for Gus, I would've thought that T.J. would have also honored Gus' word and not pressured him (or if he did not be unsuccessful in said pressure) and Gus not flaking at the last minute. Besides, Gretchen abstaining would continue the Honor before Party theme that is evident by Mikey and Gus' abstention vows and Vince's vote against himself.)