This sounds like a premise straight out of HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm….
Election season can be stressful for everyone. Those that are running for office positions get concerned with getting votes, and the rest of us voters just stress out over the avalanche of slandering political advertisements playing endlessly on our televisions.
And on that note, things became really tense in a recent election that took place in Rainier, Washington for a city councilman position. Small town government and politics can sometimes seem minuscule in the grand scheme of things, but at the end of the day, someone has to do it.
That’s why two men by the names of Ryan Roth and Damion Green, who had no prior political experience, were running for City Councilman Position #2 in Rainier, Washington. Believe me, the story gets even better (or worse, depending on how you look at it) than just two non-politicians running for office.
Only one third of potential voters in the area submitted ballots, and it’s too bad that the voter turnout was lackluster, because this scenario shows that every vote counts…and I mean that in the most literal sense possible.
After the ballots for the Rainer City Council Position 2 were counted for the first time, the total count was incredibly close. In fact, the results showed that Ryan Roth had narrowly edged out Damion Green with 49.5% of the vote to 49.3%. In a larger election, point two percent can actually be a lot of voters, but remember how I said there was a low turnout?
When you look at the total votes for each candidate, Roth had 247 votes, Green had 246, and then there were six people that submitted write in votes. Things were so incredibly close that the election immediately went into a recount, where paid poll workers went through each ballot by hand to ensure the first count was correct.
Ryan Roth showed up to watch the recount, and while he was there, he talked to King 5 news about how close things were, and how he probably would not have voted if it wasn’t for his wife’s encouragement:
“I started off 30 ahead, then 20 ahead, then 10 behind. I was like ‘it’s one vote, whatever is going to happen is going to happen, I’m not super worried about it.’ But my wife was pushing it, so (I voted).”
On the flip side of things, the news channel sought out the other candidate, Damion Green, to see how he felt about the close election and recount, and Green revealed some shocking news:
“I didn’t feel comfortable voting for myself. I thought it was kind of narcissistic, so I didn’t.”
If this were a TikTok, this is where the annoying song that sings “oh no” over and over again would play. The fact that Green didn’t vote for himself and then proceeded to lose by one singular vote is a different level of brutal.
The recount revealed that Roth did indeed win the election by one vote, and he was officially announced as the new Rainier City Councilman. Green took the news about as well as any human could, and said he plans to run for election for a third time when the next time rolls around. He believes the “third time will be the charm,” and something tells me he’ll vote for himself in the next one…
You can view the local news story about the wild election below:
And by the way, you know how I said this premise sounded like a Curb Your Enthusiasm episode? That’s because it sort of was…
It wasn’t an official episode on HBO, but instead was a small skit on SNL parodying the popular, improvisational show starring Larry David. The sketch featured David playing Bernie Sanders, and just like the story above about the Rainier County Council race, the punchline is about how the election came down to just a few votes.
Check it out:
