For those who believe their one vote just doesn’t matter, consider what happened in two city council races this week in Bluffdale and Herriman: Each ended in ties on election night.
Those deadlocks were broken Thursday with updated tallies Thursday from late-arriving ballots sent by mail.
But they remain tight, and winners likely will not be known until the final vote canvass Nov. 21. Salt Lake County Clerk Sherrie Swensen said she will release the next update of vote counts Monday.
The closest of the once-tied contests is in the Herriman District 3 council race.
Cody Stromberg has 489 votes to 479 for Sherrie Ohrn, a 10-vote difference. On Tuesday night, each had 350 votes.
In the four-candidate race in Bluffdale for two at-large council seats, Alan Jackson and Wendy W. Aston tied for the lead with 582 votes.
The two still have the overall lead — Jackson now with 691 votes to 659 for Aston, a 32-vote difference. But the third-place candidate, Connie Robbins, is gaining on them. As of Thursday, she had 633 votes and trails Jackson by only 26, closing the 62-vote gap on election night.
One other race in Salt Lake County is now the closest — with a margin of just one vote.
That is in the Alta Town Council race. Cliff Curry has 64 votes to 63 for Margaret Bourke. At the end of election night, Curry had led by two votes.
Utah Code 20A-1-304 mandates how to break a tie in a Utah election. It says “the election officer shall determine by lot which candidate is selected in a public meeting” attended by both. In practice, that usually amounts to flipping a coin.
That happened just this September, when two legislative candidates seeking to fill a vacancy tied among Republican delegates with 52 votes each. New Rep. Cheryl Acton, R-West Jordan, won by calling heads correctly in the coin flip against Lyle Decker.