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November 10, 2005
3 votes
You wouldn't know it from reading the AJC, but there is a city council race in Atlanta that is either the deadest heat or the hottest dead heat (take your pick) I can remember. 3 votes separate District 6 contenders Anne Fauver (the incumbent) and Steve Brodie, out of about 5,000 cast.
But that's not even the only oddity in this race. With about 30 votes left to be counted, it is almost guaranteed that the loser will be within 10 votes of the winner. If the uncounted provisional votes split like the other votes, it could very likely end up in a tie. Here's the potential legal angle: There were 9 write-in votes cast in this race. That means that unless the winner outpolls the loser by more than 9 votes, neither candidate will have technically reached 50% of the vote, which is required to avoid a runoff.
Like most election law, I'm guessing the law is a little unclear on this point. Election officials want to throw out those votes because there were no registered write in candidates, but I'm guessing the the candidate who comes in second will disagree and ask at least one judge their opinion on the matter.
Personally, I can agree with both sides of what could be our little version of the 2000 Florida recount: In a two person race, someone could have written in a third name because they didn't feel as if they had enough information to make a decision yet. That's pretty selfish, as runoffs are expensive for both the candidates and election officials, but it could be legitimate.
On the flip side, we routinely have elections (for President, for example) where neither candidate gets 50% of the vote but we accept a 49-44 victory or even a 49.9-49.8 victory as legitimate. Alternatively, we have runoff elections when a single candidate fails to get to a specified threshold (50%, sometimes less) among more than two known candidates. In a race where one white candidate gets 40% and two black candidates split the other 60%, it becomes pretty easy to understand why a majority of voters may not want to elect a candidate that merely received a plurality of the votes. In this race, it is impossible to say what the write-in voters desired to accomplish. Did they mean to combine their votes with the second place candidate in order to prevent the first place candidate from having an outright victory -- and if so why not just vote for the second place candidate? Furthermore, should a small handful of voters who cast votes for candidates that were not registered in that race disqualify the votes of the close to 99.99% of voters who made a legitimate choice?
As I said earlier, its too bad you can't read about this story in the AJC. If you're looking for updates, the place to go is Southern Voice. Oh yeah, as if this story needed another twist, this race pits two openly gay candidates against each other -- apparently the only such election in the entire United States this year.
Posted by Chris at November 10, 2005 11:11 PM
Comments
I wrote about this on my blog at http://atlantaoutloud.blogspot.com/ as well. I'm not so sure the voters of Atlanta are smart enough to figure out how to throw this election, as you suggest. But, it does make for interesting politics. As a Brodie voter, I'm obviously hoping for a runoff.
Posted by: AdamATL ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.chrisishardcore.com//nav-commenters.gif)
at November 11, 2005 10:18 PM
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