WEST MELBOURNE, Fla. — The West Melbourne city council race is now complete, with one vote separating the 5th and 6th candidates in the race. 

Just one vote separated Adam Gaffney and Stephen Phrampus. Before the recount, the two were tied, which would have resulted in a coin toss to decide the race. 

The vote for this race was different from other races like president that people are more familiar with. Instead, the full list of candidates running for the council are presented on the ballot, and the top five candidates hold the seats. 

Pat Benley earned the most votes, with 8,017. Austin Gaylord came in second with 5,834, Alexis McGuire was next with 5,528 votes, and Helen Voltz earned 5,396. Now, Phrampus will claim the fifth seat, earning 4,995 votes. Gaffney earned 4,994. 

Overall, there were 39,508 votes cast in the race. 

“One thing I’ll take out of this is every vote counts, so for those of us who think it doesn’t it truly does and it came down to that today, and I’ve already congratulated Stephen Phrampus on his win,” Gaffney said.

Supervisor of Elections Tim Bobanic has overseen two ties in his career and was prepared to flip a coin to settle the third.

“This will be on the list of stories I tell the high school kids when they really don’t think that their one vote really doesn’t make a difference,” Bobanic says.

Wednesday, the Brevard Supervisor of Elections did both a machine and hand recount which closed the two vote gap that initially separated Adam Gaffney and Stephen Phrampus for the 5th council seat.

A few overseas ballots were still coming in before the 10-day deadline of certifying the race on Friday.

According to the West Melbourne city charter, if a race is tied after certification, the winner will be declared by “drawing lots” at a council meeting, which in this case will mean tossing a coin.

Brevard Supervisor of Elections Tim Bobanic said the race could have been much different had some voters read the instructions and properly filled out their ballots.

“We had lots of ballots where there were no votes marked in the West Melbourne race,” said Bobanic. “They marked president, they marked the front of the ballot, a lot of people just completely skipped the race, or they didn’t mark up to five candidates — they may have marked one, two or three candidates — all of those ballots were reviewed to make sure we are capturing the voters intent correctly.”

The canvassing board met at the Supervisor of Elections Office to certify the results.