Do you think your vote doesn’t count?
Think again.
Just ask Michelle Backhouse and Allan Buckingham.
The final seat on Banff council was decided by a vote between the two, with Backhouse’s 742 beating Buckingham’s 741.
The election night recount gave Backhouse a two-vote lead, but a recount led to a one-vote difference.
Backhouse credited her training as a firefighter for helping her deal with the pressure.
“It was a little stressful, but I think that with my role as a firefighter they have taught me to manage stress and the result will be the best,” he said.
Backhouse said that as his first run for a council seat, “I didn’t know it was that weird.”
Buckingham, who was running for the council for the third time, said they knew the vote would be close but did not expect such an outcome. razor–thin margin.
“You sort of know that every vote matters and it could be close… Two votes or one vote? You know it’s possible, but you don’t really think it’s going to be that,” Buckingham said.
They noted that it can be difficult to get a sense of how a campaign is going, especially without the polls that larger cities typically have.
“Everything made me feel good and I had a lot of hope and I heard a lot of positive comments. I was pretty close, but not quite there,” Buckingham said.
Both said there was no doubt about the campaign, with Buckingham saying that “in an election campaign, there are infinite things you could or should do.”
Buckingham could have sought a judicial review but said the recount was sufficient for a final result.
“I don’t think that’s necessary for me,” Buckingham said.
If there had been a tie in the vote, provincial legislation stipulates that the names of both candidates would have been written on a piece of paper and a person would choose one at random from a box.
Jack Lucas, a political scientist at the University of Calgary, said it is “pretty rare” to have a difference of one vote.
The votes are close, but they are “extremely rare”
Lucas was part of a team that created the Canadian Municipal Elections Database comprising an archive of tens of thousands of Canadian municipal elections.
He said there are some elections where it is decided by one vote, “especially in very, very small municipalities… but it is extremely rare.”
Lucas noted that there has been research in the field of political science that suggests that some people think it is irrational to vote, since a vote that determines the election is “evasively small.”
“The probability of any candidate winning by one vote, and if they don’t run the result would be different, is very small. But here we are. Sometimes it actually happens.”
In the 2023 provincial election, the closest vote gap came in the Calgary-Acadia race, which was decided by 22 votes, while in Calgary-Glenmore the two leading contenders were separated by 48 votes. Both contests went to judicial review.
At the federal level, there have been 11 constituencies decided by one vote between 1887 and 2025. The most recent was Terrebonne in 2025, when Liberal candidate Tatiana Auguste defeated Bloc Québécois candidate Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné following a judicial recount.
A three-day hearing was held in October after a woman who voted for Sinclair-Desgagné said her special ballot was returned due to an error in the address on the envelope sent by Elections Canada.
According to Alberta government data, there were seven constituencies determined by one vote in the 2021 municipal election, with Cardston County tied.
However, six were in cities or towns with fewer than 100 votes for each candidate, while in the remaining two each candidate received fewer than 200 votes.
Low voter turnout in Bow Valley
In the Bow Valley, municipal voter turnout has historically been below 50 percent.
The last three municipal elections in Banff have seen a gradual decline: the October 20 vote attracted 1,786 voters out of a possible 4,588, or about 39 percent. There were 2,090 voters in 2021 and 2,215 voters in 2017.
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Leslie Taylor, who served two terms as Banff’s first mayor and two terms as a councilwoman, said she was “quite concerned” about the downward trend in voters, particularly on important community issues.
“We have a one-vote difference between the No. 6 candidate who made it to the council and the No. 7 candidate who didn’t. One vote really does make a difference and going down and voting matters,” Taylor said.
