Who says one vote does not make a difference? You won’t hear it from James Zelrick, who became East Penn Township’s inspector of elections, District 8, by getting one write-in vote in the Nov. 7 general election.

Nor will you hear it from Towamensing Township’s Brenda Rankel, whose one write-in makes her judge of elections in District 57-01.

Same goes for David Grant Riegel, who gets a choice to be judge of elections or inspector of elections, because he received one write-in for each post.

Put this one into the “be careful what you wish for” category. A 20-year-old Whitehall Township resident told me that on Nov. 7 as a lark he wrote in his own name for inspector of elections in his voting district.

“Next thing I know, I received notice from the (Lehigh) county to come to get my certificate of election. Can you tell me what an inspector of elections does? I haven’t a clue.”

He said he is not sure he is going to accept the position, but after I mentioned that the job pays $115 for the day plus $10 to attend a class to be trained for the position, his eyes widened. I reminded him, however, that a “day” probably involves about 15 to 16 hours of work, so it factors out to barely above minimum wage, and the job is just two days a year.

There have been many instances where one voter staying home or one voting for one of two candidates resulted in tie votes. Breaking ties involves, essentially, the luck of the draw or the flip of the coin.

Most voting jurisdictions do not go through the costly process of holding another election, so officials will resort to a variety of tiebreaking methods.

Carbon County, which had its tiebreakers last week uses numbered tiles. The candidate who randomly selected tile number one was declared the winner in each instance.

One of the winners was Andrew Batson of Towamensing Township, the only person who showed up at the county Board of Elections write-in count on Nov. 27. The former Maine resident wrote in his own name and will become one of the township auditors. Among other duties, the township board of auditors sets the salaries for the working township supervisors.

Some tiebreaking ceremonies smack of glitziness. A few years ago, a tie for a Mount Dora, Florida, council seat was settled when Marie Rich’s name was pulled from a felt-top hat on a red-velvet-covered table. Rich and Nick Girone both received 2,349 votes. The city charter did not lay out a process for breaking ties, so the council resorted to drawing lots rather than spending $15,000 on another election.

While Carbon County uses tiles, coin tosses have broken ties in New York, Illinois, Wisconsin, Ohio, Missouri, Washington, Florida, Minnesota and New Hampshire, while South Dakota and Arizona have used card games. In one, the first candidate to receive an ace wins. In addition to Florida, winners’ names in Virginia were chosen from a hat.

All methods, however, involve some random method. I believe there should be a short quiz with questions about the office being sought. The candidate with the highest number of correct answers wins.

Ties in elections at higher offices are really rare. A recent study showed that between 1898 and 2014, just one of more than 25,000 federal elections was decided by one vote. That was in 1910 in New York’s 36th congressional district where the winner took the seat by one vote out of more than 41,000 cast. There has never been a tie at that level.

Only twice during that period has a state-level general election ended in a tie — in 1978 for a Rhode Island state senate seat (4,110-4,110) and two years later in a New Mexico state house race where the outcome of the tie was settled by a coin toss. In the Rhode Island case, a special election was held two months later with 50 percent fewer voters turning out at the polls.

The possibility of a tie occurring in the Electoral College is more realistic since there are just 538 votes. While 270 are needed to win the presidency, there is the possibility of a 269-269 tie. The closest we have come to a tie in the modern era was in 2000 when George W. Bush received 271 votes to Al Gore’s 266. (There was one vote for another person.)

The only Electoral College tie was in the election of 1800 when Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr both received 73 votes.

The understanding was that Jefferson was the presidential candidate, while Burr was his running mate.

Electors were to cast ballots for Jefferson for president and Burr for vice president, but there was a miscommunication, and electors cast ballots for both without specifying the office. The deadlock was thrown into the U.S. House of Representatives, where Jefferson was chosen on the 36th ballot by one vote. A constitutional amendment corrected this oversight so it would not be repeated.

By Bruce Frassinelli | tneditor@tnonline.com