Some Friends Just Have Brain Lock!

A One-Vote Oddity

His Friend Forgot to Vote!

 

One vote counts. And one candidate in Gig Harbor, Washington found out the hard way. On Wednesday October 2, 2002, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported that Kevin Entze had lost the Republican nomination for the 26^th District State House to Ed Mitchell by the whopping total of one vote.

After each ballot had been counted by hand, Entze learned that he lost the Republican nomination to a State House seat by a single vote—5,870 to 5,869.

 To add insult to injury, the defeated Entze, a Gig Harbor police officer, knows who one of those potential voters who lost him the election is. The non-voter, one of the department’s reserve police officers “left his ballot on his kitchen counter and it never got sent out,” Entze said.

That one vote would have at least forced a runoff of some kind for the house seat. So in November of 2002, it was Mitchell and not Entze, who went up against the democratic incumbent Patricia Lantz.

“Both Ed and I have stories like that,” Entze said, still positive after such a heartbreaking defeat. “It’s great to see just how vital your vote is.”

 

A Final Note

All the state races in that year’s 26^th District were close in November of 2002. The Republican State Senator won his seat by a paltry 179 votes (.67% of votes cast). Democratic incumbent Patricia Lantz defeated Mitchell by a relatively narrow margin. And Democratic incumbent Brock Jackley was defeated by Republican Lois McMahan by a mere 282 votes.

Potentially, three election results could have been changed had one medium sized church rallied all of its voters to go to the polls.