Coin Toss Decides Race For County Commissioner
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From Tuesday’s primary election, the Clark County’s Commissioner Race was just decided by flipping a coin.
Gregory A Shenton and Mac Wagoner were running against each other for the Clark County Commisioner’s chair. 260 people voted – and each candidate received 130 votes. So where does it go from there? Grab your quarter, flip the coin, and “call it in the air.”
Gregory Shenton was the incumbent, so he got to call the toss. He called “heads” and as fate(?) would have it, he won.
I remember the first time I heard that some elected officials could be decided by a coin toss. My jaw just about hit the floor. I could hardly believe that in our government system, with as much campaigning that takes place and with the drive to “get out and vote.” – after all that – someone can be appointed office simply by random chance.
A tie in a situation like this is going to be rare. Clark County’s population is estimated at a mere 1,000, and the larger the population the less chance of a tie, but however rare, ties do happen. The community counts on having good leadership in place in elected offices. I can’t help but think that there must be dozens of better solutions out there to “break a tie” than by random chance.
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Comments
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0 
0 Didn’t the same thing happen to the mayor of Island Park or something along those lines? I remember a PR story somewhere in the 90s, maybe…?
I guess a coin toss is cheaper than a runoff or revote, but as #1 points out, it’s not very entertaining.
I think also that a coin toss would be more random, and less likely to raise my ire, than to find out that my candidate got as many votes but lost based upon someone else’s arbitrary decision.
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0 0 Regarding the poker reference as a way of picking the county commissioner…….do we really want someone in office that’s good at “bluffing”? 
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0 0 But Communist Rebel 67 (:evil:), politicians are ALL good poker players!! All good at “bluffing” and putting on a game face….
otherwise, they probably wouldn’t be “politicians”, hey?
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0 0 hey, where’s my evil smiley? it only had one colon on each side!!
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0 0 Good point Babs…. as for Dr.Evil…you can’t have any type of quotations next to your colon. 
(that didn’t sound right!)
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0 0 Not the colon!!!!!!!!!
ha ha ha ha
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0 0 Hey, CR67, do you have a list you could post of how to make all these smileys? :happy: :test:
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0 0 You know, this happens more often than you think — I’d say in just about one in four of the elections held in small counties and towns in the area. Island Park has had mayoral races decided by the flip of a coin, and this isn’t the first time in Clark County.
And let’s face it — is the flip of a coin any more fate-ish or silly than seeing who can get the most votes? One guy getting one more vote than the other seems to be just as random.
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Maybe it should be decided by someone of authority, or based on who’s education, or something!
If its going to be by chance anyway, at least a game of Poker would be a more entertaining way of deciding the race.