We received an interesting comment last night to our June 9^th posting, “One Vote… Just One Single Vote.”  It came from Sierra County supervisorial candidate Karen Rickman. She pointed out that Sierra County completed its manual tally of the ballots and the 5^th District race officially ended in a tie.  The Elections Code states, “In the case of a tie vote, nonpartisan candidates receiving the same number of votes shall be candidates at the ensuing general election.” That means candidate Rickman and her opponent, Scott Schlefstein, will now have to do this all over in November. Five more months of campaigning because of one vote. Amazing. 

This took place in the county that had the highest voting turnout in the state at 73.26 percent — well above the statewide turnout of 30.4 percent! But when you take into account that just over 300 votes were cast in this Sierra County supervisorial race, that means another 100 individuals decided to sit on the sidelines for one reason or another.

There are still a number of close supervisorial races around the state that are being finalized by their respective County Elections Offices. These races are close and every counted vote is making a difference. In just a week, we have seen slight changes in the percentages that candidates have received. 

Candidate Rickman said that she hopes the lesson that every vote counts has been learned in Sierra County. We hope it’s a lesson being learned all around the state.