ONE VOTE, REAL POWER: HOW CLOSE ELECTIONS REVEAL DEMOCRACY AT WORK

In elections involving thousands—or even millions—of ballots, what difference can a single vote really make?

All the difference, in fact.

In 2022, Massachusetts State Representative Kristin Kassner won her race against Republican Lenny Mirra for the Second Essex District by just one vote out of more than 23,000 cast; 11,763 to 11,762. She would go on to comfortably win reelection in 2024, but her first victory came only after a recount process that stretched across six towns and multiple reviews, ultimately shifting the result from a loss to the narrowest possible victory.

“If any single person didn’t vote,” Kassner said, “it would have been a tie.” She added, “Don’t go home and put your comfy pants on. Bring your kids to vote—your voice really does matter.”

That kind of razor-thin outcome might sound rare, but in local elections, it isn’t unusual. In Hamilton’s 2025 town election, a local ballot measure on funding a new Cutler Elementary School building for the Hamilton Wenham Regional School District passed by just 13 votes—1,013 to 1,000. In a town of thousands, a handful of ballots decided the result.

For Town Clerk Carin Kale, these margins underline a simple reality: “Every vote matters.”

They also reveal something less visible about elections—the level of precision behind them. Before ballots are even cast, voting machines are tested using sample ballots to confirm they produce exact results. On Election Day, each vote is recorded, checked, and reconciled with voter sign-ins. At the end of the night, officials ensure every number matches.

“We have never not reconciled the numbers to the exact count,” Kale said.

In close elections, the biggest variable is often not the counting process, but participation itself. Although Massachusetts offers early and mail-in voting, not everyone chooses to cast a ballot.“How many people shrugged their shoulders and said, ‘but my vote doesn’t matter so I won’t take time out of my day’?” Kale said.

Voter turnout doesn’t only influence close races—it helps shape policies that affect daily life. In a July 15, 2025 blog post titled Why Local Elections Are Critical to Democracy, The League of Women Voters wrote that local officials “affect your daily life as much, if not more, than those in the federal government.”

Still, in larger elections, the power of one vote can feel distant. Raymond La Raja, a political science professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, said, “In probabilistic terms, one vote often does not make a significant difference in the election outcome.”

But he adds an important caveat: “What if everyone believed their vote didn’t count and so they didn’t show up on Election Day? We would not have a democracy. Collectively it is important to vote, and individually citizens should see it as both their duty and an expression of their commitment to a candidate and democratic way of life.”

That tension—between what one vote usually does and what it can do—is what makes close elections so striking. One vote will usually not decide an election on its own—but sometimes it does, and no one can know in advance which vote will be decisive. That uncertainty is where the weight of voting lives.

ONE VOTE, REAL POWER: HOW CLOSE ELECTIONS REVEAL DEMOCRACY AT WORK