In the state of Alabama, it turns out that important decisions might sometimes be left to chance, according to a new state bill that would allow chance to determine tied city elections.
According to AL.com, instead of a new election, the decision will be left to a flip of the coin.
"It can be quite expensive, and you have to open the (polling sites) in that district, and get all of the poll workers," said state Rep. Sam Jones, D-Mobile, who is the sponsor of HB144, which eliminates the requirement of a second or a runoff election when only two candidates are seeking office and finish in a tie vote...
[Alabama Secretary of State John] Merrill said the advantage of HB144 is to save on the costs of a municipality holding a special election. A fiscal note attached to the bill says that a cost savings would be realized through HB144, but an exact amount was "undetermined."
The estimate to hold a special election in Mobile, for instance, is around $134,000.
The bill is awaiting consideration before a Senate committee, and Merrill said he is hopeful it gets a hearing this week.
"We always think it's better to be prepared for things like this than wondering how you address them (if the issue surfaces)," Merrill said. "That's one of the reasons we wanted to act on this before leaving office."
So, if this bill passes, an election in an Alabama city would be sent to the court of chance. Heads or tails determine who would win the seat.
I guess you have to admit that it's... fair?
Merrill said it's up to the candidates and the county sheriff to decide what kind of random game unfolds to decide the election winner.
"It could be a roll of a dice, high card, or rock-paper-scissors," said Merrill. "The sheriff is the one responsible for flipping the coin."
LOL! Can you imagine "Rock, Paper, Scissors" to determine the fate of a city?
Under HB144, the probate judge would be charged with overseeing the random game. If the probate judge openly took part in the campaign of one of the candidates involved in the tied outcome, then the presiding circuit court judge "breaks the tie by lot"...
Merrill also said that candidates are allowed to set up the parameters of the random game.
"If I were in it, what I would have preferred is a best two-out-of-three attempts at the coin flip," he said. "That way, you get to have one person call heads and the other person calls tails each time. And then you do a third one and that would be it. But in Clay County, they did it one time."
Some tiebreakers can get complicated. In Neptune Beach, Florida, a 2014 council contest was decided when one of the two candidates' names was drawn out of a hat. From there, the winner of that drawing got to call heads or tails during the subsequent coin flip. The winner of the coin toss then got to choose who would go first or second in a random drawing of numbered ping-pong balls.
"I would have done a coin flip because if it's good enough for the Super Bowl, it's good enough for me," said Rory Diamond, the loser of the ping-pong drawing told the media at the time.
It just seems crazy that, in today's day and age, something like an election can come down to rock-paper-scissors or some other silly game.
But hey, would it be any less weird than the messed up election processes and shenanigans we've seen in recent years???
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