美國小鎮拋硬幣選鎮長
據美國媒體11月20日報道，愛達荷州小鎮阿爾比恩近日的鎮長競選不分勝負，最終通過投擲硬幣決定誰當下任鎮長。
根據愛達荷州的法律規定，如果候選人不分勝負，要通過拋硬幣確定最終結果。換做在夏威夷，他們就要舉行吃熱狗比賽一決高下。如果在懷俄明州，候選人要把手放在馬車上，誰堅持的時間長誰獲勝。
擲硬幣前，兩名鎮長候選人先競猜財務主管瑪麗•葉曼心裏想的數字。現任鎮長鮑登猜的數字較爲接近，贏得要正面還是要反面的權利。
鮑登運氣不錯，正確地選擇了反面，成功進入第三屆任期。那枚決定鎮長歸屬的一美元純銀幣已經捐給了阿爾比恩歷史學會，要公開展出。
KMVT CBS 11 reports that the town of Albion, Idaho recently decided who would be mayor for the next term with...a coin toss.
This past Election Day saw the 120 voters of Albion split a vote down the middle in a race between incumbent Mayor Don Bowden and his challenger, John Davis. We procured a calculator at great expense here at Yahoo and after a few hours of number crunching came to the conclusion that this means 60 votes came in for Bowden, and 60 for Davis.
KMVT explains that according to Idaho law if there a tie between two candidates, a final decision will be made by the flip of a coin, which is better than Hawaii’s hot dog eating contest or Wyoming’s “who can keep thine hand on thine carriage longest” challenge.
Now, and this is true as far as we can tell, the right to call heads or tails was won by Mayor Don Bowden when he was the closer of the two candidates to guess what number City Treasurer Mary Yeamen was thinking. Let’s guess that she wrote the number down and that it wasn’t just kept “in her head,” because that would make us question this very respectable political process.
To paraphrase The Hunger Games, and we’re not just randomly mentioning it to help with our web traffic, how DARE you, the odds were ever in Mayor Bowden’s favor. He correctly picked tails and now will serve a third term, knowing that literally half of the town didn’t want him back. He told KMVT, “I’m relieved that we’ve finally done it. I would have been good with it either way... so yeah, it's historic. I don't know how many times in the past that it's happened, but it's an interesting happening.”
The coin, a pure silver dollar, was provided by D.L. Evans Bank and has been donated to the Albion Historical Society where it will be put on display.
