The people of Dickinson, a small city in Galveston County, Texas in US, opted for a ping pong ball selection to elect their next mayor. A tie between two candidates running for mayor of the Houston suburb ended after the winner's name was drawn from a hat. But the elected mayor is not happy.
The unusual selection
A runoff election in December 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 each. A recount last Tuesday certified the same results.
As per the Texas law, a tie in a race for public office can be resolved by 'casting of lots' or a game of chance, which could be through darts, a coin toss or a roll of the dice, said Elizabeth Alvarez, a Texas election lawyer. In the past too, 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, who became the 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, is equally unhappy.
"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," he told NYT.
Skipworth wants to turn his strange selection into a lesson for his students on the importance of voting. He 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.
