A four-vote lead is hardly a commanding margin, but the incumbent mayoral candidate in Spring Lake Park, Minnesota, appeared to have edged ahead as election night drew to a close.
By the following morning, though, his edge had vanished. The two candidates each achieved exactly 1,401 votes, leaving Dan Buchholtz, the Minneapolis suburb’s top election official, to navigate the meticulous procedures Minnesota law demands for tied races.
The North Star State is one of at least 28 in the US that require some type of random drawing method to determine a winner when legislative races result in a tie, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures . Many of those states apply the same “by lot” rule to mayoral and municipal ties.
While few state laws say ties must be broken using a certain object – like in Idaho, which specifically calls for a coin toss – statutes in other states, like Minnesota, leave the exact mechanism up to local election officials.
Buchholtz worked with the city attorney to settle on drawing names, rather than rolling dice or flipping coins, for example, because he found it “the most fair and objective” strategy.
“I’d have to assign one candidate heads and one candidate tails. Then it’d be, ‘Well, why did you decide to pick heads for this person versus tails?’” the election official told CNN. Opting for a drawing relieved him from having to make any assignments.
So, nearly a week after the November 3 election and the day he would administer the drawing, Buchholtz typed up the candidates’ names in the same Arial font, printed them on twin blank papers he cut to exactness, and walked across the street from City Hall to the Hy-Vee grocery store. There, he bought matching toothpick canisters to be stuffed with the names before being placed inside, of course, a Spring Lake Park city tote bag.
“It’s probably the only time in my career that something like this will happen,” said Buchholtz, who has been overseeing elections in Minnesota for 25 years.
He admitted, “This really has been kind of fun.”
Election ties torment candidates every year, across state and party lines and all down the ballot.
And simply, said Derek Muller, an elections law expert at the University of Notre Dame, the likelihood of a tie just goes up in a smaller election.
Considering very small electorates can end up casting a vote on tons of different candidates and propositions during a given election, “It shouldn’t surprise us that there are dozens of ties each year in the United States,” Muller told CNN.
In Spring Lake Park, just 2,802 people cast a ballot in the mayor’s race.
“Especially when you’re dealing with a small mayoral election or a small city council race where there’s a low turnout – so this is especially true in special elections or things in off years where the turnout’s even lower – you would expect ties to happen more frequently,” he said.
But not all states agree on how to pick a winner.
It is up to the state legislature to decide what to do in the event of a tie, Muller said. Some host tiebreakers; others hold entirely new elections.
In 1998, Estancia, New Mexico, boasted a 1,000-person population when the tiny town held its white-knuckle mayoral election.
Jim Farrington, a restaurant owner, and Joann Carlson, an emergency medical technician, eked out 68 votes apiece.
“My opponent wanted to play dice, and I wanted to play five-card stud or showdown,” to settle the tie, Farrington told CNN at the time . New Mexico, like Minnesota, has vague “by lot” drawing laws for tied elections.
“To decide what game to be played, we tossed a coin,” Farrington said.
Farrington won the coin toss, and the presiding judge then dealt cards for a single hand of five-card stud poker.
Carlson, his opponent, questioned, “Who in the heck put this law on the books?”
An elaborate process for a city council race in Neptune Beach, Florida, took six minutes and three games of chance before crowning the winner in 2014. Judges drew from a hat and called a coin toss before the candidates pulled a numbered Ping-Pong ball from a bag – the highest number won.
To break a tie in the Mississippi state House election the next year, candidates carried out an archaic version of drawing straws, The Associated Press reported.
The candidates met in the governor’s conference room before they each reached into a red canvas bag, retrieving one of two silver-plated business card holders.
Twenty-year Democratic incumbent Bo Eaton’s box held a green, 3-inch-long plastic straw, and Republican challenger Mark Tullos had a 2-inch-long red straw, according to the AP.
But Tullos successfully appealed the result to the state House, disputing the validity of some affidavit ballots, and unseated Eaton.
Tullos has held the state House District 79 seat ever since.
This past Monday evening in Minnesota, municipal employees scrambled to set up extra seating and to find speakers loud enough to reach the adjoining multipurpose room as close to 100 spectators jockeyed for spots inside the small council chambers to watch the drawing for mayor of Spring Lake Park.
On a small table in front of the chambers, Buchholtz laid out the two papers, the toothpick cans – which had been stripped of their labels and contents – and the bright blue woven tote bag.
A nervous Buchholtz held out the bag carrying the indistinguishable capsules to council member Barbara Goodboe-Bisschoff, who looked away as she reached her arm in to pull the winner’s name.
“The successful candidate is Bob Nelson,” Buchholtz finally said to a predictably equal share of applause and boos, holding up for the cameras the small piece of paper inscribed with the incumbent mayor’s name.
Officially, Nelson had beaten out his challenger, Halyn Roth, to keep his seat.
Just five minutes after Nelson’s name was announced, Roth filed for a recount.
And so, the true results of the mayoral contest will be revealed later this month when a dozen election judges convene at the courthouse to count every Spring Lake Park vote by hand in front of the small community.
If Roth ends up with more votes, he’ll win, Buchholtz told CNN. If it’s another tie, Nelson will hold onto his seat because he won the tie-breaker drawing.
“I’m an election nut,” Buchholtz said. “I believe we have good laws in the state of Minnesota governing elections, and I think that this makes the voting process and the election transparent to our residents.”
