"It's a hell of a way to pick a leader," says Democratic Sen. Gene Davis of Salt Lake City.
But that's exactly how Democrats decided their Utah Senate leaders last week when they were unable to break a deadlock, although the 4-4 tie was not exactly a Bush v. Gore battle.
After two rounds of fruitless balloting Friday afternoon, they didn't resort to arm-wrestling or a lightning round or a footrace through the Capitol Rotunda. They went to the coin toss.
"We knew we would have to have some way to break the tie and thought that was a fair way to do it," says Holladay Sen. Pat Jones, who knew it would be a tie vote from the start. She ended up with "tails" and won the leadership spot over Davis.
West Valley City Sen. Karen Mayne snagged the assistant minority whip spot on a coin toss as well, beating Salt Lake City Sen. Scott McCoy.
Davis says he would have preferred to try for one more vote. Then, if they were still jammed, they could come back another time to try to resolve the race. But the majority of the Democratic caucus voted to go to a definitive tiebreaker.
In the Republicans' Senate elections, Taylorsville's Mike Waddoups edged Orem's John Valentine by the slimmest possible margin. But with 21 votes cast, a tie was out of the question.
The tiebreaker is something of a peculiarity in U.S. elections, with coins tossed, names pulled from a hat, even hands of five-card stud poker played to decide past electoral ties. A dice throw settled Washington Terrace's mayoral race in 2003.
Under Utah law, in the event of a tied election, "the election officer shall determine by lot which candidate is selected." That in spite of Article VI, Section 27 of the Utah Constitution, which states: "The Legislature shall not authorize any game of chance, lottery or gift enterprise under any pretense or for any purpose."
