A Dead Tie, And Runoff, For Cumming City Council

CUMMING, GA — If you've never believed the old saying that "every vote counts," all you need to do is take a look at last week's city council election in Cumming.

An incumbent council member and his challenger are headed to a runoff after they ended election day in a dead tie. Councilman Chuck Welch and challenger Chad Crane each had 441 votes after polls closed last Tuesday.

Preliminary results showed Crane winning by three votes. But that tight margin prompted a recount and, when ballots were tabulated again this week, the tie was announced.

"I've been doing this for over 20 years and I've never had a tie," Forsyth County Voter Reigstration and Elections Supervisor Barbara Luth said Thursday.

The runoff election has been set for Dec. 5. Voting at Cumming City Hall will be from 7 a.m.-7 p.m. that day. Early voting runs Nov. 27-Dec. 1, from 8 a.m.-5 p.m. every week day at city hall.

In Georgia, voter are accustomed to runoffs in races in which more than two candidates are running and none gets more than 50 percent of the vote. But, Luth said, that wouldn't have been the case in Cumming.

The city charter says that, no matter how many candidates run for council, the candidate with the most votes wins — making the likelihood of a runoff there even more slim. The charter also had no provisions for a tie, meaning Luth's office had to decide what to do about the tie after it was certified.

"Most of the time in city charters, they have if it's a tie what happens — flip a coin or pick a card or roll the dice," she said. "They don't have anything in the (Cumming) city charter, so we went with a runoff."

Luth said that there was a respectable 35 percent voter turnout for municipal elections in Cumming, which is not a bad number for a vote with no county, state or national races on the ballot.

And it's already been something of a momentous election year in the Forsyth County seat.

Mayor H. Ford Gravitt, who has served in the post for 47 years after first being elected in 1970, was defeated for re-election by local businessman Troy Brumbalow, 563-388.

So, what happens in the unlikely event that Welch and Crane are all knotted up again on Dec. 5? Yet another runoff, Luth said.

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