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Williamsport City Council seat to be determined by a drawing due to tie vote

After the post-election canvas of votes revealed a tie between Williamsport City Council candidates Republican Eric Beiter and Democrat April Line, the winner of the seat will be determined with a drawing as dictated by state law, according to Forrest Lehman, Lycoming County director of elections.

Although the election was held over a week ago, additional ballots were expected via mail. The deadline for those ballots typically is seven days after the election, which would have been Nov. 11. Due to the Veterans Day holiday, however, the deadline was moved to Nov. 12.

"You have provisional ballots cast on Election Day that you're reviewing, determining which ones you can count," Lehman explained.

"You're still receiving military and overseas ballots...so you're getting new votes in and typically a lot of candidates gain votes during that process," he said.

On election night, the two council candidates were 12 votes apart, which Lehman called "too-close-to-call territory." Once the extra votes came in it became apparent that what had been too close to call became a tie.

"What I explained to both candidates is that, yes, we are at the point in the process where we're very near the end," he said.

While Lehman noted Wednesday morning that one overseas military ballot cast in the city's election had not arrived, he confirmed late afternoon that the ballot had missed the deadline required by state law.

Lehman stressed that this is not a thing "where the voter can decide at the last minute -- that they're going to come in and drop off the ballot."

"A military or overseas voter has to have signed an affirmation stating they put their ballot in the mail before Election Day," he explained.

The reason the ballot is given seven days to arrive is because some military ballots come from service people who have been deployed to remote locations or from overseas voters who are mailing ballots via foreign mail.

Because the ballot did not arrive, the state election code's protocol for ties must be followed.

Lehman stressed that he doesn't make up the rules governing this.

"It's not a Williamsport thing or Lycoming County thing. This is how every county in the state does it when there are tie votes," he said.

For those who think tie votes rarely happen, that is far from the reality of it.

Lehman pointed out that tie votes happen all the time, but they're usually for lower profile offices.

"I've had tie votes for school directors, for borough council. The most common scenario, sadly, are the 15-way ties with write-in votes for offices that none of these folks really want. They just put their name down or their neighbor's name down and I have to draw to settle a 15-way tie," he said.

"We've done this many times over the years. This is nothing new. What's new is just that it's happening for a city council office," he added.

A drawing will be held Nov. 21 to break the tie, per state election code. It is similar to the procedure used to determine ballot positions in the primary elections.

"The fortunate part is the election code has anticipated that situations like this will arise and it tells us exactly what we need to do to resolve them. People may not be entirely satisfied by that, but you know, I don't make the rules, I'm just carrying them out," Lehman said.

If the scenario plays out that there is a tie, then the candidates will meet on the date specified to pull numbers out of a box.

The numbers are from 100 to 200 and sealed in individual envelopes. The candidates each select an envelope, open it and read the number. The candidate with the lowest number is the winner.

The lesson to be learned from this situation, according to Lehman, is that every vote is important.

"This should be a real life lesson to everybody how every vote really does matter," Lehman said.

"It's become sort of an abstract platitude that people in my job will say over and over -- that the media will try to say over and over -- but I'm sure it feels very abstract to a lot of the public until something like this happens," he said.

"Maybe we need something like this to happen every once in a while because then it's something that you can point to, to say, look, we're really not kidding here. If one more person had found time in their day to go vote in the city, we would literally have a different outcome," he said.

"Hopefully we continue to have improving turnout for local elections. That people see that it can make a real difference whether they get out to the polls or not," he added.