EASTON, Pa. — A couple dozen ping pong balls Friday picked winners in 116 races in Northampton County that ended in a tie in this month's municipal election, filling the dozens of offices for years to come.
Every county in Pennsylvania chooses its own method for breaking ties in elections.
In Northampton County, the task falls to 30 numbered ping pong balls in a brass drum. When the time comes, each candidate — or, in their absence, a county elections worker — draws a numbered ball.
Whomever draws the lowest number wins.
In most years, only a handful of offices are decided that way.Northampton County officials
In most years, only a handful of offices are decided that way.
However, when voters choose judges and inspectors of elections every four years, as they did this year, Northampton County's oracular ping pong balls get quite a workout.
Few candidates file to run in or receive nominations for the county's elected election positions. In many precincts, no names appear on the ballot for the races, leaving voters to write in candidates they would like to see in office.
In many of these races, no candidate receives more than one vote, resulting in dozens of ties in precincts across the county.
Dozens of candidates for the offices filled the Northampton County Council chambers Friday morning to learn their fate.
Friday’s drawing didn't only choose elections officials; it also settled ties in races for municipal auditors, tax collectors and other local offices.
Northampton County’s drawing is the latest in a long line of drawings to make decisions stretching back millennia.
Four-thousand-year-old Mesopotamian clay tablets recount priests placing marked lots — exactly what they were made of is unclear — in a stone vessel and shaking it until one fell out to choose a course of action.
Archaeologists and historians have uncovered evidence of ancient civilizations using dice, sticks, pebbles, headless arrows and other tools to leave decisions up to fate.
