We know by now that America is a land of deep political division and heated red-on-blue, blue-on-red, red-on-red and blue-on-blue rancor.
Or so it seems.
What happened when two Republican candidates in an obscure California race deadlocked — 3,882 votes to 3,882 votes — tells us that there are still corners of the country where civility thrives. Civility and drinking straws.
The story takes place in Galt, a bedroom community of about 26,000 people south of Sacramento. It’s a small city that many residents hope stays that way, a place where the growth chased by some of its neighbors has largely been rejected, a proposed casino met resistance and the biggest local controversy revolves around whether a new gas station should come to town.
It’s also a place where three people were running for two slots on the five-person City Council. Tim Reed easily secured one of them with more than 5,800 votes. But when Mathew Pratton and Bonnie Rodriguez tied for the other seat, the city was in a bit of a pickle.
Tied elections in America are nothing new. Over the years, they have been settled by coin flips, drawing names out of a bowl and even a quick game of poker. But in our Trumpian era of institutional and electoral distrust, quirky tiebreakers seem like a throwback to a time when “stop the steal” might have referred to a police crackdown on convenience-store crime.
Pratton, 62, is a longtime Galt resident who once had bicycle shops and a photo studio in town, and who spent 15 years coaching the local junior-varsity football team. Rodriguez, 52, is the former publisher of The Galt Herald, the town’s newspaper. After 20 years of attending civic meetings, she decided to try her hand at making local decisions instead of covering them. They are Republicans — although the seat is nonpartisan — and they are friends.
Because California counts its ballots so very slowly, it took awhile before they knew they had tied. The initial count showed Rodriguez about 120 votes behind Pratton. But by the time the election was to be certified, they were stuck at 3,882 votes each.
The candidates lingered on the many what-ifs. Pratton knew someone who had wanted to vote for him but had failed to get his ballot in the mail — a vote that could have made all the difference. Rodriguez considered all the doors she hadn’t knocked. But they found the situation funny, too.
“Both Matt and I sat back and said, ‘We were terrible campaigners, terrible,’” Rodriguez said. “‘We deserved what we got.’”
To Pratton, a recount seemed likely to cost more than the $5,000 or so that he said he had raised for his campaign. As word spread, people in town came up with creative ideas to settle the matter. Galt is in a fairly rural area, so Pratton thought a milking contest might be the way to go. Rodriguez’s son jokingly suggested that the two chase chickens. Someone on Facebook, Rodriguez said, suggested that they wrestle in Jell-O.
The ‘draw straws method’
Tina Hubert, the city clerk, knew that Galt had rules for this. Back in the spring, the City Council had resolved that any election tie would be settled with the “draw straws method.” But the possibility of having a tie felt so remote, she had never thought through what that would actually entail.
On Dec. 3, she consulted both the city manager and the city attorney, who suggested they look up whether there were any formal rules to drawing straws.
“There wasn’t,” Hubert said.
The assistant city clerk was sent to purchase a $3 pack of brightly colored straws, like the kind you might get at a fast-food drive-through. Hubert decided the contest would involve three straws of varying lengths so that whoever went second would still have a choice. They picked three green ones, figuring the color would be both neutral and visible to anyone who came to watch.
“We decided beforehand, we need to state the rules. We didn’t want to say in a public meeting, ‘Shortest straw loses.’ We said, ‘Hey, longest straw’s the winner,’” Hubert said.
She asked the local police chief to be the official straw-holder. She didn’t think there’d be trouble. She thought his large hands would keep the straws steady. And she had to tell Rodriguez and Pratton what they would have to do.
“I was just happy a decision was made,” Pratton said. “Didn’t want it to drag out into some kind of goofy process.”
Regrets, and a twist
Pratton had figured the draw would unfold quickly in a hallway, but instead it transformed into a public event with news cameras in the City Council’s chambers.
The city clerk came up to Rodriguez and said she needed to discuss an important issue — who would draw the first straw? Rodriguez worried the two candidates could immediately get sucked into a never-ending spiral.
“You’ll have to flip a coin,” she said, describing her thoughts in the moment. “Who gets to call it? You’ll have to flip a coin.”
(Something like this, in fact, happened in Neptune Beach, Fla., in 2014, when two City Council candidates tied in a race there. A name was drawn from a hat to determine who would call a coin toss. That coin toss then determined who would go first to draw a numbered ping pong ball from a machine. The highest-value ball won the election.)
Rodriguez said Pratton should go first. Pratton said the lady should go first. Rodriguez insisted, and so Pratton drew first.
“It was kind of obvious when I pulled — it was the longest,” Pratton said.
Pratton won the seat. Rodriguez felt a tinge of regret.
“He pulled the middle straw, which is exactly what I would have done,” she said. “So if I had gone with ‘Ladies first,’ maybe I would have won.”
Did it feel fair?
“It doesn’t, absolutely not,” Pratton said. “I was happy and felt bad at the same time.”
Rodriguez said the election system had worked as it was supposed to, and she trusted it. “Probably the more democratic solution would have been to hold a special election, but at a $165,000 price tag, absolutely not. I would never have done that to our town.”
It wasn’t just that Rodriguez trusted the system. She also trusted Pratton — which made it a lot easier to accept the results. “He’s a really good guy,” she said. “Galt is going to be in good hands.”
Pratton brought his straw home. He hopes to include it in the frame of his official City Council photo. He was sworn in last night.
In a final twist, another member of the City Council had earlier resigned, leaving that representative’s seat open. So one of Pratton’s first acts as a new member of the City Council was to determine, with the other council members, how to fill that seat for the remaining two years of that term.
He and the other council members voted unanimously to appoint a replacement: Bonnie Rodriguez. So she was sworn in last night, too.
Sometimes, even in today’s winner-take-all political arena, even when you lose, you can still win.
The post An Election Draw Decided by a Straw appeared first on New York Times.
