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A single Corpus Christi City Council seat drew five contenders in November’s election, a level of interest that ultimately prolonged the final outcome until this week — and at some points left officials scratching their heads as they were forced to dig through archaic rules to figure out how to determine the winner.
After the November votes were counted, incumbent Everett Roy and former council member Billy Lerma earned the most support. But since neither got a majority of votes, the contest remained undecided. Both men advanced to a December runoff.
The second round of voting didn’t bring a resolution. Turns out, voters were deadlocked. The candidates tied, 1,916 to 1,916. By law, that result triggered a recount. At Lerma’s request, the recount was conducted by hand and took city officials roughly four days.
The result: still a tie, the first one in Corpus Christi in decades, city officials said.
They scrambled to figure out what to do next.
The answer was in state law, which calls for the presiding officer — in this case, the mayor — to supervise what’s called the casting of lots to determine the winner.
“We were all looking at each other like, does anyone even know what that is?” said City Secretary Rebecca Huerta, who has been a city employee for three decades and said she’s never heard of such a thing.
“Someone said that it kind of sounded biblical,” she said.
Their next move was to consult with officials at the Texas Secretary of State’s Office, which confirmed that the law calls for some kind of game of chance, and city officials had to choose one.
Huerta says they took this game seriously, spending three days — yes, three days — in meetings to decide how to resolve the tie. The group went over the pros and cons of using cards or flipping a coin, imagining all the ways each method could go wrong.
“What if it were to bounce off someone’s toe? Or what if someone wanted multiple tosses?” Huerta said, recalling the discussion. “It was hard. We had to think about a way to do this that would be fair, neutral and as transparent as possible.”
Drawing a bead on a solution
The method they decided on was one they’d used for years for another election task, determining the order that candidates’ names appear on the ballot. In this exercise, candidates draw from a small wooden box filled with numbered beads, and the one who draws the bead with the highest number is listed first on the ballot.
As a way to determine ballot order, this technique drew little attention from residents. But settling an election this way was different.
On a social media post about the tie breaker, some Corpus Christi residents called it “ridiculous” and “a joke.”
“What’s next, a giant Rock, Paper, Scissors tournament to find out who will be the next mayor?” one asked.
Maybe!
It may sound strange, but states across the country have laws calling for games of chance to be used to break ties in a local or state election, which could mean rolling dice, drawing straws or cards, or flipping a coin.
In 2023, a mayoral race in North Carolina was decided by tossing a coin. In 2014, a Minnesota commission seat was decided in favor of the candidate who picked a red board game piece from inside a cloth bag. And there have been other such tiebreakers in Texas.
The alternative would be multiple recounts, which might not change the tally, or a special election, which creates a new set of concerns.
In such cases, the electorate doesn’t stay the same, and administering the new election costs taxpayers, said Michael Pitts, professor of law at Indiana University who has done research on resolving close elections through a game of chance.
“It’s just as good to flip a coin or to roll dice or whatever Corpus Christi did, as it is to put the election administration all back together again and do a revote,” Pitts said.
After the result, gasps and a ‘wow’
At a live-streamed meeting on Jan. 7, Corpus Christi Mayor Paulette Guajardo explained to Roy, Lerma, and the public how the process would work.
There would be 10 numbered beads in the box. The candidate who drew the one with the higher number would be the winner.
To determine which candidate would draw first, both rolled a die on a table at the same time. Lerma rolled a 4. Roy rolled a 2.
Guajardo then placed the 10 beads in a wooden box and shook them. By virtue of the die roll, Lerma drew first and held his bead tightly in his first. Roy followed. Tension grew.
Guajardo asked the candidates to show each other their beads. Lerma had drawn a 2. Roy had a 3. “Wow,” Guajardo said.
Some observers audibly gasped.
Roy was declared the winner. After shaking hands with his opponent, Lerma quickly left the room.
“The voters have spoken. They have said that these are the two candidates, and it’s a tie,” Huerta said. “This method may seem unorthodox, but we saw it and it works.”
Roy is set to be sworn into office next week.
Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. She is based in Corpus Christi. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org
