美国小镇抛硬币选镇长

据美国媒体11月20日报道，爱达荷州小镇阿尔比恩近日的镇长竞选不分胜负，最终通过投掷硬币决定谁当下任镇长。

根据爱达荷州的法律规定，如果候选人不分胜负，要通过抛硬币确定最终结果。换做在夏威夷，他们就要举行吃热狗比赛一决高下。如果在怀俄明州，候选人要把手放在马车上，谁坚持的时间长谁获胜。

掷硬币前，两名镇长候选人先竞猜财务主管玛丽•叶曼心里想的数字。现任镇长鲍登猜的数字较为接近，赢得要正面还是要反面的权利。

鲍登运气不错，正确地选择了反面，成功进入第三届任期。那枚决定镇长归属的一美元纯银币已经捐给了阿尔比恩历史学会，要公开展出。

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.