Two candidates tied in a town election. They settled it with a dice roll.
Dice roll decides Wisconsin village election after the race was tied - The Washington Post
When Nate Bell received a photo of his Wisconsin village’s election results last week, he was in disbelief.
A dice representing Bell landed on six; Zoschke’s dice stopped on two. Bell’s number was larger, so the 42-year-old was selected as the village’s new president.
“I thought, ‘Okay, this is over,’” Bell said. “It’s not been an unpleasant experience, but it’s also like sitting on the edge of your seat for a day and a half. I was ready for this to be done, and of course I’m happy it worked out this way.”
The election in the village of nearly 1,200 people occurred April 4 between Bell, a board trustee, and Zoschke, who was seeking his second two-year term as president. Bell’s family moved to the village 27 years ago, and he said he fell in love with the community. He began serving as a board trustee in December 2015.
After voting for himself last Tuesday, Bell said, he finished work as a network engineer around 8 p.m. and started to follow the results. Once the board’s canvassers counted the votes, Heidi Teich, the village’s clerk, sent Bell a photo of the even results.
Teich said a tie last occurred in the village about 16 years ago.
“I do find it rather unbelievable that this tie occurred when two years ago we were struggling to even find a candidate to run for the office,” Teich said in an email. “It is [a] testament to the community that we had such great interest by the residents to have a contested race.”
The next morning, Bell told Teich that he wanted board members to choose between him and Zoschke. Teich, having reviewed the state election guide, said they would take a different approach.
According to Wisconsin’s Election Administration Manual, a deadlock should be settled with a method that produces a random result. In the past few years, dice rolls also have been used to settle elections in Arkansas and California.
The board in Sister Bay scheduled a meeting for Thursday morning and narrowed the options for picking a winner to rolling dice, drawing straws, pulling a name from a hat, drawing from a deck of cards or tossing a coin.
Before a winner was declared, Bell said he dwelled on the 78 people who voted in the election but didn’t vote in the race for village board president.
“We had just wished one more person had voted,” Bell said. “[But] I had already, you know, made my peace with the fact that whatever happened … there’s nothing I’m going to do to change this outcome.”
After some discussion Thursday, the board decided to pick a winner with a dice roll, and because Bell and Zoschke didn’t attend, a board member represented each of them. Bell was on a video call for work that morning when he began receiving messages that he had won the dice roll.
After his call, Bell said, he walked through the village and visited its administration building to discuss how to proceed. He will be inaugurated April 18. Bell retrieved the winning dice as a souvenir and ordered about 100 more to give away while he’s in office.
Zoschke told the Door County Pulse that he won’t request a recount.
“I have no problems or antipathy or bad feeling about the process,” Zoschke told the Wisconsin news outlet. He added: “I feel honored and privileged to have served as long as I have.”
Bell said he and Zoschke often argued at meetings, but they live in the same neighborhood, separated by just one house. Bell said he ran into Zoschke near a marina Sunday night. They joked about the voting process and discussed collaborating in the future.
“I hope someday that Rob and I can sit down at some events for charity,” Bell said, “and just roll dice to raise money.”
Related Knowledge Center: Offshore wind energy
Over the next decade, U.S. offshore wind power is expected to grow from a single 30-megawatt wind farm off Rhode Island to more than 2,000 MW of capacity along the Atlantic Seaboard. There are contracts for wind power off the coasts of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Maryland, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Virginia.
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory has estimated the United States has over 4,000 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind potential, enough to power the country four times over.
The growth in part being spurred by state solicitations, including in New York, where then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) set a commitment of 9,000 MW of offshore wind by 2035, and in Connecticut, where in June 2021, Gov. Ned Lamont (D) signed legislation authorizing the construction of 2,000 MW of offshore wind by 2030.
The offshore development is also being driven by an investment tax credit set to end in December 2019 and is equal to 12 percent of expenditures. U.S. Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Tom Carper (D-Del.) have introduced a bill to extend the tax credit for up to eight years.
The Interior Department has held eight competitive lease sales that resulted in 15 offshore wind leases over 1.7 million acres that has the potential for 21 GW of capacity. In February 2022, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management completed a bidding process that realized $4.37 billion for 488,000 acres across six lease areas in federal waters off New York and New Jersey.
Projects have also been proposed off the Southeast coast, off California and Hawaii, and for the Great Lakes.