Some 10 years ago, people were awestruck when a small district, named Sahebgunj, in eastern India for the first time in electoral history had tossed a coin to decide the winner of a tie between two candidates for the single post of panchayat samiti members.
This time, the people of Dickinson, a city in Galveston County, Texas, within Houston, opted for a similar option while selecting their mayor. A tie between two candidates running for becoming the mayor of the Houston suburb ended this weekend after the winner's name was drawn from a hat.
The unusual selection
According to reports, a runoff election in December, last year, between Sean Skipworth, a former City Council member and a professor of government at the College of the Mainland in Texas City, and Jennifer Lawrence, a mechanical engineer, ended up with 1,010 votes for each. A recount of the votes last Tuesday once again certified the same results.
Together, the two candidates received 2,020 votes, which Skipworth said seemed like "evidence of higher intelligence in the universe."
According to Texas law, a tie in a race for public office can be resolved by 'casting of lots' or a game of chance. It could be through darts, a coin toss or a roll of the dice, said Elizabeth Alvarez, a Texas election lawyer.
Citing a similar instance, The New York Times reported that a tie between two candidates running for City Council in Wolfforth, Texas, in 2012, was decided with the flip of a 1974 Eisenhower silver dollar.
Skipworth became mayor after a ping pong ball with his name was pulled out of a hat during a ceremony that lasted about 10 minutes on Thursday.
Trying to be as fair as possible
"It was as fair as you can make it," said Lawrence, who lost the random drawing on Thursday night.
"I feel like this is how it was supposed to go. It's disappointing, but it is what it is," NYT quoted her as saying.
Amid a presence of some 100 people inside the City Hall, the hat was placed on a table that had been draped in a sparkly gold sheet. Dickinson's current mayor, Julie Masters, presided.
After the two contenders placed two ping pong balls with their signed on each in the hat, Masters lifted the hat and rattled them around. Mike Foreman, the mayor of Friendswood, Texas, picked one of the balls and shouted out loud, "I got one!" Foreman declared, holding the ball up high, before Masters read the name aloud: "Sean Skipworth!"
Skipworth was accompanied to the ceremony by his wife, Melissa, and son Christopher, 8.
Intending to turn his strange selection into a lesson for his students on the importance of voting, Skipworth said he wanted to amend the City Charter to ensure that if a future election ends in a tie, it prompts another election, rather than a random drawing.
Located 30 miles southeast of Houston, Dickinson has a population of around 21,000 people.
