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Speaker 1: Welcome to BrainStuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, BrainStuff. Lauren Vogelbaum here with a classic episode from our archives. In this one, we get into why voting really does matter, including a few of the rare times that an election really has come down to a single vote here in the United States. Hey, BrainStuff. Lauren Vogelbaum here. You've probably heard the old truism that every vote counts. But judging from the history of low voter participation in U.S. elections compared with that in other developed countries, it seems that many Americans haven't believed that casting a ballot for a particular candidate or for a particular issue really matters that much. In the case of the 2016 presidential election, this was substantiated by a Pew Research Center survey in which 25% of non-voters who were eligible to cast a ballot cited my vote would not matter as the explanation for why they abstained. That's nearly as high as the number who said that they didn't vote because they didn't like either candidate, 26%, and higher than the portion who had neglected to register by the deadline, 22%. When it comes down to it, the chances of a single voter casting what researchers call a pivotal vote, that is, a single vote that swings an election, are pretty remote. But it does happen. In a 2001 study, University of Chicago economics professor Casey B. Mulligan and business economic consultant Charles G. Hunter studied nearly a century's worth of congressional election results and 21 years' worth of state legislative election returns, nearly 57,000 elections in all, not counting uncontested races. Out of the 16,577 federal elections studied, only one was decided by a single vote. But the researchers found seven state elections that came down to a single ballot. As Mulligan wrote in a 2010 post for the New York Times economics blog, the chances that a voter will cast a ballot that will determine the winner of a federal election is less than one in 100,000. In state races, the odds increase to one in less than 25,000. In local elections, where the electorate may be in the few thousands or even hundreds, pivotal votes can happen even more often. While nationwide data isn't available, in Ohio alone, 14 races for office in 2015 resulted in either a tie or a single-vote margin, according to the Record Courier newspaper. We spoke with Mulligan via email. He said the determine-the-winner incentive to vote is minuscule. Even in a local election with, say, 2,000 votes, it's still only a 1 in 1,000 chance. But even though one vote has only a tiny chance of being the pivotal one in an election, that doesn't mean that voting isn't important. Collectively, votes matter a great deal. Certain groups in the population that have higher turnout rates, such as older voters, the wealthy, and white Americans, benefit from the clout that they achieve as a result. We also spoke with Sean McElwee, an analyst for Demos, which is a public policy organization that works to reduce political and economic inequality in the United States. He said, when gaps in turnout are smaller, policy is more equitable. Even in deeply blue or red districts, vote shares send important signals to representatives about their constituents. In local elections, where turnout rates are often single-digit, Vote margins are far narrower, and turnout is even more skewed against people of color, young people, and low-income folks. Of course, some of that turnout is influenced by citizens' access to voting, including their ability to get correct and timely information about ways for them to make their vote, and their ability to actually get to the polls or send in an absentee ballot. Many states and localities have been accused of voter suppression. That is, purposefully making it difficult for people from these demographics that are traditionally underrepresented at the polls to start making themselves heard through voting. But that's a different episode. Today, let's talk about a few of the elections that were decided by a single vote. The only congressional election to have been determined by a single vote was the 1910 election for the 36th Congressional District of New York. Democratic challenger Charles Bennett Smith, a newspaper editor by trade and an advocate of prohibition, faced Republican incumbent D.S. Alexander. According to a New York Times article from November 20th of that year, after the initial counting of the returns, the two candidates were tied at 2,684 votes each. But the election board noticed an error in the total on a tally sheet from one district. When it was corrected, Smith received the single vote needed to elect him According to his congressional biography, Smith became the chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and was elected three more times to Congress before losing a re-election bid in 1918. But the city of Seat Pleasant, Maryland had one of the strangest one-vote elections ever in the year 2000. It was decided by a vote that wasn't cast. A woman showed up at her polling place on the evening of the election, and though she was registered to vote, her name didn't show up in the records because she had changed her address. Officials did not allow her to cast a ballot for the candidate of her choice, Thurman D. Jones Jr., and Jones lost the election 247-246 to incumbent Eugene F. Kennedy. Jones later filed a lawsuit contesting the result, but in a 2001 ruling, the Maryland Court of Appeals overturned a lower court ruling and left Kennedy as the winner because it had not been shown that fraud had been committed. Then there's the case of the 2012 Democratic primary for the 87th legislative district in Missouri. Because of redistricting, Representative Stacey Newman was pitted in a primary against a fellow legislator, Representative Susan Carlson. On election night, Newman prevailed by a single vote, 1,823 to 1,822. But the St. Louis County Election Board declined to certify the results. saying that 102 voters at one polling place had mistakenly been given ballots for a neighboring district. But in a do-over primary seven weeks later, the result was unchanged. Newman again won, this time by 95 votes. And in one instance, a one-vote election result included a ballot cast by a deceased voter. In 2011, in the village of Manilas, New York, A man named Arnold Ferguson, who was the father of one of the candidates for the village board, submitted an absentee ballot ahead of Election Day, but then died three weeks before the election. Election officials later admitted that Ferguson's vote should not have been counted, but the state Supreme Court ruled the ballot couldn't be challenged after it was removed from its envelope. It's unclear what impact the ballot had on the outcome, in which Harold Hopkinson won by a single vote over Mark Baum. Today's episode is based on the article, Six Times a Single Vote Really Did Change an Election, on HowStuffWorks.com, written by Patrick J. Kiger. BrainStuff is a production of iHeart Podcasts in partnership with HowStuffWorks.com and is produced by Tyler Klang. For more shows from iHeart Podcasts, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 1: Welcome to BrainStuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, BrainStuff. Lauren Vogelbaum here with a classic episode from our archives. In this one, we get into why voting really does matter, including a few of the rare times that an election really has come down to a single vote here in the United States. Hey, BrainStuff. Lauren Vogelbaum here. You've probably heard the old truism that every vote counts. But judging from the history of low voter participation in U.S. elections compared with that in other developed countries, it seems that many Americans haven't believed that casting a ballot for a particular candidate or for a particular issue really matters that much. In the case of the 2016 presidential election, this was substantiated by a Pew Research Center survey in which 25% of non-voters who were eligible to cast a ballot cited my vote would not matter as the explanation for why they abstained. That's nearly as high as the number who said that they didn't vote because they didn't like either candidate, 26%, and higher than the portion who had neglected to register by the deadline, 22%. When it comes down to it, the chances of a single voter casting what researchers call a pivotal vote, that is, a single vote that swings an election, are pretty remote. But it does happen. In a 2001 study, University of Chicago economics professor Casey B. Mulligan and business economic consultant Charles G. Hunter studied nearly a century's worth of congressional election results and 21 years' worth of state legislative election returns, nearly 57,000 elections in all, not counting uncontested races. Out of the 16,577 federal elections studied, only one was decided by a single vote. But the researchers found seven state elections that came down to a single ballot. As Mulligan wrote in a 2010 post for the New York Times economics blog, the chances that a voter will cast a ballot that will determine the winner of a federal election is less than one in 100,000. In state races, the odds increase to one in less than 25,000. In local elections, where the electorate may be in the few thousands or even hundreds, pivotal votes can happen even more often. While nationwide data isn't available, in Ohio alone, 14 races for office in 2015 resulted in either a tie or a single-vote margin, according to the Record Courier newspaper. We spoke with Mulligan via email. He said the determine-the-winner incentive to vote is minuscule. Even in a local election with, say, 2,000 votes, it's still only a 1 in 1,000 chance. But even though one vote has only a tiny chance of being the pivotal one in an election, that doesn't mean that voting isn't important. Collectively, votes matter a great deal. Certain groups in the population that have higher turnout rates, such as older voters, the wealthy, and white Americans, benefit from the clout that they achieve as a result. We also spoke with Sean McElwee, an analyst for Demos, which is a public policy organization that works to reduce political and economic inequality in the United States. He said, when gaps in turnout are smaller, policy is more equitable. Even in deeply blue or red districts, vote shares send important signals to representatives about their constituents. In local elections, where turnout rates are often single-digit, Vote margins are far narrower, and turnout is even more skewed against people of color, young people, and low-income folks. Of course, some of that turnout is influenced by citizens' access to voting, including their ability to get correct and timely information about ways for them to make their vote, and their ability to actually get to the polls or send in an absentee ballot. Many states and localities have been accused of voter suppression. That is, purposefully making it difficult for people from these demographics that are traditionally underrepresented at the polls to start making themselves heard through voting. But that's a different episode. Today, let's talk about a few of the elections that were decided by a single vote. The only congressional election to have been determined by a single vote was the 1910 election for the 36th Congressional District of New York. Democratic challenger Charles Bennett Smith, a newspaper editor by trade and an advocate of prohibition, faced Republican incumbent D.S. Alexander. According to a New York Times article from November 20th of that year, after the initial counting of the returns, the two candidates were tied at 2,684 votes each. But the election board noticed an error in the total on a tally sheet from one district. When it was corrected, Smith received the single vote needed to elect him According to his congressional biography, Smith became the chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and was elected three more times to Congress before losing a re-election bid in 1918. But the city of Seat Pleasant, Maryland had one of the strangest one-vote elections ever in the year 2000. It was decided by a vote that wasn't cast. A woman showed up at her polling place on the evening of the election, and though she was registered to vote, her name didn't show up in the records because she had changed her address. Officials did not allow her to cast a ballot for the candidate of her choice, Thurman D. Jones Jr., and Jones lost the election 247-246 to incumbent Eugene F. Kennedy. Jones later filed a lawsuit contesting the result, but in a 2001 ruling, the Maryland Court of Appeals overturned a lower court ruling and left Kennedy as the winner because it had not been shown that fraud had been committed. Then there's the case of the 2012 Democratic primary for the 87th legislative district in Missouri. Because of redistricting, Representative Stacey Newman was pitted in a primary against a fellow legislator, Representative Susan Carlson. On election night, Newman prevailed by a single vote, 1,823 to 1,822. But the St. Louis County Election Board declined to certify the results. saying that 102 voters at one polling place had mistakenly been given ballots for a neighboring district. But in a do-over primary seven weeks later, the result was unchanged. Newman again won, this time by 95 votes. And in one instance, a one-vote election result included a ballot cast by a deceased voter. In 2011, in the village of Manilas, New York, A man named Arnold Ferguson, who was the father of one of the candidates for the village board, submitted an absentee ballot ahead of Election Day, but then died three weeks before the election. Election officials later admitted that Ferguson's vote should not have been counted, but the state Supreme Court ruled the ballot couldn't be challenged after it was removed from its envelope. It's unclear what impact the ballot had on the outcome, in which Harold Hopkinson won by a single vote over Mark Baum. Today's episode is based on the article, Six Times a Single Vote Really Did Change an Election, on HowStuffWorks.com, written by Patrick J. Kiger. BrainStuff is a production of iHeart Podcasts in partnership with HowStuffWorks.com and is produced by Tyler Klang. For more shows from iHeart Podcasts, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
