Hold on to your hats! The Dietrich Idaho election results are in!

For City Council, 4-year term:

Don Heiken 41 votes

Wanless Southwick 41 votes

Fred Hill (the newcomer) 41 votes

The successful candidate for the City Council, 2-year term, also got 41 votes.

But that is no problem.

No tie there!

The population of Dietrich Idaho is 175 and there are 117 registered voters. Seventy-one of them voted, casting votes for two of the 4-year seats.

Now this was supposed to work like this: One of the 4-year candidates would lose.

This whole thing has the town in a snigwiggle; what should they do? (Go ahead! Use my new word.)

Well, the town fathers thought that this might happen some day. In their wisdom they said, What if there is a tie? Without bating an eyelash they said, Flip a coin!

What they should have said was, Draw straws! The short guy is out!

Well, the law says that they must toss a coin. Okay, but how would that work with three tied candidates?

They are still working on it!

You must have 200 words in an article. Therefore we will praise the city of Dietrich Idaho for their high voter turnout.

In contrast, the City of Twin Falls Downtown Candidate Forum had 10 candidates and only 15 attendees.

Ill bet you can guess who the 15 attendees were; probably 10 candidate spouses and 5 babes-in-arms. Well our paper, The Times-News, said spectators and not participants.

Now are there 200 words?

Yep!

See you later alligator!

copyrightJohn T. Jones, Ph.D.2005