Coins: the high-tech way in which Iowa decides presidential elections
This past week, a bunch of caucus precincts in Iowa broke Democratic contest ties by flipping a coin. There are 99 counties in Iowa, and each has a different method to breaking a caucus voting tie. Here are all of them in alphabetical order.
- Adair: Coin flip
- Adams: Pick cards from deck, highest card wins
- Allamakee: Staring contest
- Appanoose: Arm-wrassling
- Audubon: Ask the Magic 8 Ball
- Benton: Beer pong tournament
- Black Hawk: Rock, paper, scissors
- Boone: Rock, paper, chainsaw
- Bremer: Thumb-wrassling
- Buchanan: Do a recount and realize you made a ‘mistake” by ‘one vote” last time
- Buena Vista: Pie eating contest, but pie is made of worms (and not the good kind)
- Butler: Whoever can hold their pee the longest picks
- Calhoun: The winner of a game of Simon Says led by a hyperactive three year old who got to stay up way past her bedtime gets to decide
- Carroll: RuPaul Drag Race-style runway show hosted by special guest RuPaul
- Cass: Based on the opinion of whoever walked the most this past week according to their FitBit
- Cedar: A plain, good ole-fashioned jitterbug danceathon
- Cerro Gordo: Grandma lip-sync battle to Miley Cyrus song
- Cherokee: Count the moles on Old Man Jasper ‘s body ‘ evens we go with candidate 1, odds with candidate 2
- Chickasaw: Thunderdome ‘ Two supporters enter. One supporter leaves.
- Clarke: Toe-wrassling
- Clay: One guy yells at a different guy until he convinces that guy to change his vote and there is no longer a tie
- Clayton: Rubik ‘s cube contest, but all nerds are automatically disqualified (NOTE: caucus results to be reported at minimum one year from caucus date)
- Clinton: Let ‘s let the horse that can count decide!
- Crawford: Eenie Meenie Minie ‘ Minie Moe!
- Dallas: Get Texas ‘s opinion
- Davis: Vogue-off
- Decatur: Nose-wrassling
- Delaware: Get Texas ‘s opinion
- Des Moines: Spitting contest
- Dickinson: Pissing contest
- Dubuque: Shitting contest (anyone with nervous diarrhea disqualified)
- Emmet: See who has the longest pinky nail, but don ‘t know why we even bother checking because it ‘s always gross Uncle Jed
- Fayette: Breaking a tie is easy! Simply have a friend hold the necktie and karate chop it with your hands
- Floyd: Look, does one caucus vote really make a difference anyway?
- Franklin: Hold a contest to see who can come up with the best contest
- Fremont: Invent time machine, go back to medieval times, joust (NOTE: may also be accomplished in visit to Medieval Times if time machine unavailable)
- Greene: Pray and see what Jesus says
- Grundy: ‘Jenna can usually convince me to agree with her on anything when she ‘s naked”
- Guthrie: Merge with caucus group next door to eliminate tie
- Hamilton: http://rangevoting.org/TieBreakIdeas.html
- Hancock: Hehe. Our county is called HANCOCK. Hehe.
- Hardin: Knife fight ‘ no throwing stars allowed
- Harrison: Knife fight ‘ throwing stars allowed, unlike the pussies in Hardin County
- Henry: Dodgeball ‘ must use knives instead of a ball
- Howard: Pig-wrassling
- Humboldt: Discontinued Olympic sport of your choice
- Ida: Hire the mafia and see how quickly people suddenly love your candidate
- Iowa: Whoever can withstand a teenager ‘s non-stop complaining about the ‘stupid car” (2010 Honda Civic) her ‘stupid parents” got her for the longest amount of time chooses
- Jackson: Tug-o-war using an invisible rope
- Jasper: Elect a caucus president who will make the decision for you!
- Jefferson: Penis-wrassling
- Johnson: 1. Find a long, pointy stick, 2. Person who can put this stick furthest up their butt gets to choose
- Jones: Indoor water polo match, with horses
- Keokuk: Whoever can explain WTF a ‘Keokuk” is gets to pick
- Kossuth: Air guitar contest, but NO HAIR BAND SONGS allowed
- Lee: Make up a contest on the spot that guarantees your candidate will win (e.g., whichever candidate ‘s side has the person with the longest hair)
- Linn: Listen, a tie is incredibly unlikely to happen, so fuck having a contingency plan
- Louisa: Let the college kids decide ‘ they always make the best decisions
- Lucas: Buzzfeed quiz
- Lyon: What ‘s the point of life anyhow? Nothing has meaning. We ‘re all going to die. The world will probably end soon. We might as well all just get into bed and cry and sleep for the rest of our lives.
- Madison: Pig-penis wrassling
- Mahaska: Twerking contest
- Marion: Coin flip, using The Magnificent Balthazar ‘s ‘tricky coin” wink wink
- Marshall: Whoever brought the most gun ammo with them
- Mills: See who can jump farthest over an increasingly larger pile of puppies ‘ contest ends when someone kills a puppy
- Mitchell: Call up Russian President Vladimir Putin and ask him for his opinion
- Monona: Do whatever the county that ‘s alphabetically before this county does
- Monroe: Scrap the election process and just pick the candidate that would be ‘more fun to get a beer with” since that ‘s how you should make decisions that could involve nuclear war
- Montgomery: Let the guys who run the fantasy football league do whatever they usually do
- Muscatine: Get really drunk and fuck everyone at your caucus meeting place; this will not help you break the tie, but it ‘ll sure be fun!
- O'Brien: King O ‘Brien of Iowa gets to decide, obviously
- Osceola: Who-can-bleed-more-without-dying contest
- Page: Okay, so first, everyone stands in a line. Then, everyone takes out their pencils and eggs (uncooked) that they brought with them in case there was a tie. Then each person passes the eggs to the person on their right and their pencils to the person on their left. If you ‘re on the end of the line (either side) you get eliminated. Then people whose birthdays land on the first half of the month move one step forward. The rest of the people sit down. The eliminated people leave the room. Then they immediately come back in. Finally, everyone jumps and dances around.
- Palo Alto: There are no laws in this county
- Plymouth: T-Rex-wrassling; if T-Rex is unavailable, wrassle a brontosaurus
- Pocahontas: Flip a dollar coin because your county is named after the woman pictured on it, but then realize you confused Pocahontas and Sacagawea
- Polk: Play a highly-involved live-action role-playing game that no one quite understands the rules to, give up in the middle, and just let the nerd who suggested the solution to get his way
- Pottawattamie: Wait until Super Bowl and see what happens with their coin flip
- Poweshiek: Just let a 17-year-old pick since, you know, IOWA LETS 17-YEAR-OLDS VOTE
- Ringgold: Sit in a corner, drink lemonade, and let other people deal with the problem
- Sac: Be real about your racism, disqualify any minority voters, conduct recount
- Scott: Whoever 102-year-old Aunt Doris picked because, let ‘s face it, she ‘s going to die soon, so we might as well bring her a little joy
- Shelby: Whoever 102-year-old Aunt Martha did NOT pick because, let ‘s face it, she ‘s been out of touch with reality for the past seven years or so due to dementia
- Sioux: Wait, are you really still reading this list of dumb jokes?
- Story: Draw straws
- Tama: Something something corn something something
- Taylor: Best caption to New Yorker caption contest cartoon
- Union: Just let that guy from The Bachelor pick
- Van Buren: Solve this like any other problem in the county ‘ WWMVBD? (What Would Martin Van Buren Do?)
- Wapello: Hawkeye-wrassling
- Warren: WHY do you refuse to ask Texas what they are doing?
- Washington: Seriously, PLEASE just ask Texas what it is doing
- Wayne: That thing where someone drops a bat and then people put their hands one on top of the other? That thing!
- Webster: Maybe flipping a coin is the easiest way to go after all?
- Winnebago: Say ‘fuck it,” don ‘t pick a winner, and drive off in your RV
- Winneshiek: Pick the candidate that is NOT Hillary Clinton
- Woodbury: Wonder why you had to caucus instead of holding a regular goddamn election
- Worth: Don ‘t worry about any of it since this is just Iowa and you aren ‘t going to be deciding jack shit for the country
- Wright: Duel to the death