West Texas election to be decided with coin toss (No kidding!)

[MelissaB]

WOLFFORTH, Texas (AP) A coin flip will decide the outcome of a recent West Texas city council election after both candidates had the same number of votes.

The coin toss Friday will break the 118-vote tie between council candidates in Wolfforth (WOOL-furth), near Lubbock. Bruce MacNair and Bryan Studer agreed to the option because they didn't want the city to pay $10,000 for a run-off.

The city attorney drew up a three-page contract outlining rules of the coin toss based on state election procedures for municipalities.

Texas election law provides three options in the event of a tie: a runoff election, one candidate conceding or some form of casting lots.

The candidates will draw for who gets heads and who gets tails.

Link: http://www.gosanangelo.com/news/2012/may/18/no-headline---tx--election-coin_toss119/

[SoutherDem]

1. Can't remember where or when but

I have heard of this happening before. Add some meat behind every vote counts. Just imagine the person who didn't vote and doesn't like the outcome of the coin toss.

[RagAss]

2. Why not ten paces and draw ?... Texas ain't what it used to be.Yeeee Hawwww.

[JFN1]

6. Damn! That's funny!

And you just made me shoot Pepsi out of my nose...caught me off guard, you did...!

[tanyev]

3. They'd better check both sides of the coin before the toss.

[JFN1]

4. Statistics - the science, not the practice -

has proven "heads" comes up roughly 60% of the time in a coin toss...no one is certain why, either.

I think I'd choose another method of drawing lots, in their shoes...

[gratuitous]

5. One of the standard tie-breaking methods

I've also seen ties broken by a high card draw from a deck of cards. This usually happens in smaller election districts where the vote tabulations can be easily checked, and the race is a true deadlock.