State Dem legislative candidate in my district won by ONE VOTE about 10 or 12 years ago after a "recount," leading his fellow Dems to give him the nickname "Landslide Jim."
It was a special election as the predecessor had resigned. Only one thing on the ballot: choose Dem or GOP candidate for State Delegate. About 5000 or 6000 votes cast and the GOP candidate had won by 17 votes.
This qualified for automatic recount, but they only recount the absentee ballots and assume that the machine ballots were properly counted.
The 300 (give or take 5) absentee ballots, the only votes to be recounted, were placed in an unlocked box (law required a lockbox). The unlocked box sat on a Dem court clerk's desk overnight.
When the 300 ballots were recounted the 17 vote GOP win turned into a 1 vote Dem win. Highly improbably considering it was a ballot as simple as possible, two opposing candidates was the only issue on the ballot.
Even more galling, the Dem victor lives a few blocks away, his wife is a friend of my wife, and he's been to our house a couple times for large parties.