A City Council Candidate Loses by One Vote, After Not Voting

A local election in Washington State could have come down to a coin toss.

Instead, one of the candidates, Ryan Roth, won by a single vote — his own. His opponent, Damion Green, didn’t vote.

The two were competing for a seat on the City Council in Rainier, a community of approximately 2,400 people about 16 miles southeast of the state capital, Olympia.

Mr. Roth, a landfill manager and father of four, ran a campaign. He canvassed voters, handed out yard signs and marched in the town’s parade in August. Mr. Green, an auto body technician whose household includes six children, chose not to campaign, trusting that voters would remember his stances from a previous run.

After clearing a primary election, the two candidates met at a public forum with sitting City Council members. They both talked about a need for economic growth while maintaining Rainier’s small-town feel. Mr. Roth, 33, mailed in his ballot a few days before the Nov. 7 election. Mr. Green didn’t make it to the polls.

In an interview on Wednesday, Mr. Green, 40, said that he wished he had voted but not for himself.

“I ran for other people, not for me,” he said, adding that at the public forum before the Nov. 7 vote, he learned that he and Mr. Roth held similar views.

“Two middle-class dudes trying to do the same thing for our community, so it was a win-win for Rainier,” Mr. Green said.

For several days after the election, the vote results appeared to be a tie. Finally, Mr. Roth inched ahead by one ballot. It took election officials nearly a month to certify the win after a mandatory hand recount last week.

The race for Rainier City Council was part of Thurston County elections, which included a countywide proposition to raise sales taxes to give law enforcement funding a boost. The proposition passed.

Voting in the council race was so close that the county was required by law to conduct a hand recount. Ultimately, Mr. Roth won with 247 votes to Mr. Green’s 246. State law prescribes that had it been a tie, a winner would be “publicly decided by lot.”

In the last instance of a tie, Thurston County favored a coin toss — which Mr. Green said could have ended his bid for the council seat with the same outcome.

“I feel bad for the people who did vote for me,” he added.

In an interview, Mr. Roth said the process showed him that every vote counts. “A lot of people don’t think that it does, but it does,” he said.