This is a Civics 101 story from CNY Decides, a collaborative podcast between the award winning newsrooms of WAER and Central Current.
In American elections, it is easy to assume that a single vote gets lost in the crowd. During the last mid-term elections in New York's Onondaga County, 169,000 voters turned out to the polls. When dealing with numbers that large, individual participation can feel small.
But if you talk to the people who run the local elections office, they will tell you a completely different story.
“Onondaga County has a pretty pervasive history with close elections,” said Dustin Czarny, the county’s Democratic Election Commissioner. “We had one of the closest state Senate races ever, with John Mannion in 2022, winning his race by 10 votes.”
That razor-thin margin was out of more than 123,000 total ballots cast. The victory was so narrow that it altered political trajectories well beyond Central New York.
“I won by 10 votes,” Congressman John Mannion rememberd of the race. “I have lots of families of five that are taking credit for my victory. Had I just taken my foot off the gas a little bit, I probably wouldn't have had that job, and most likely wouldn't have this job [in Congress] either.”
The 2022 recount stretched late into December as the elections office meticulously verified every ballot. Because Onondaga County sits as a politically balanced “purple” region, tight margins are an annual expectation for election workers.
Kevin Ryan, the county's Republican Election Commissioner, worked as a legal inspector during that 2022 recount. He likens the outcome to a political Butterfly Effect, where a handful of votes set off a massive chain reaction.
“How different our political environment would be right now if John Mannion had been sent packing after one term in the state Senate,” Ryan noted. “John Mannion probably wouldn't be in Congress right now.”
Ryan pointed out that the ripple effect traveled far; if Mannion's opponent, Rebecca Shiroff, had won those 10 votes, she would have been the incumbent state senator defending her seat in the next cycle, completely altering who ran for local town supervisor and congressional seats across the district.
When an election night margin is within 0.5%, New York State law automatically triggers a full manual hand count. Bipartisan teams of two—one Republican and one Democrat—sit at tables to physically inspect where voters filled in the bubbles.
The process catches human quirks that electronic scanners sometimes miss, such as a voter circling a name or putting an X through a bubble. It also reveals mistakes that invalidate a ballot entirely.
“Sometimes we'll end up throwing out votes if they do things like write messages on the ballot, like “I hate this guy,’” Czarny says. “Or one time we had a ballot we called the 'oops ballot,' where they tried to fix their mistake and wrote ‘oops’ on there. Well, that's a word and, by New York law, writing an identifying mark throws the entire ballot out.”
Central New York's Recent Cliffhangers
While the 2022 Senate race made state history, microscopic margins are common in local municipalities:
- 2021 Solvay Mayoral Race: Decided by just 13 votes.
- 2023 County Clerk Race: Separated by roughly 300 votes out of 90,000 cast.
- 2025 Cicero Supervisor Race: Decided by a margin of 49 votes.
Such tiny margins change more than who sits in the legislative chamber; they actively change how politicians govern.
In 2021, Derek Baichi won the race for mayor in the village of Solvay by a mere 13 votes. Elected at 36 as the village's youngest mayor, Baichi has admited he came into office eager for overnight transformation, pushing for new parks, field days, and aggressive spending.
That big-city spending in a small town triggered a backlash. When his re-election margin shrank to the single digits, Baichi took it as a personal warning from his constituents.
“I actually got on my hands and knees, and I said, ‘You know what, I'm going to do better this time,’” Baichi remembered. He explained that those 13 votes forced him to slow down and listen to the neighborhood. “Just before I was coming over here, someone flagged me down: ‘There's a hole in the road.’ I go, ‘Oh my god, let's fix it right now.’”
Election officials lament that voter turnout regularly plummets during local, mid-term election cycles, even though municipal decisions impact daily life more directly than federal policy.
“I have friends of mine who care more about the NHL playoffs than they do the local elections,” Ryan said. “What happens in these elections matters far, far more to your life than who wins a hockey, baseball, or basketball game. Governance is about how we want the government to react in its relationship between the governed and the governing, from policing to infrastructure.”
With so much at stake, voters are enouraged to put New York's primary election day, June 23rd, on the calendar if they plan to act in their own self-interest.
