The Associated Press is highlighting a fun story: a Texas city council election resulted in a tie, and rather than spend the city's money on a re-vote, the candidates decided to just flip a coin, which is apparently something that Texas election law actually allows.

According to The AP's Betsy Blaney, writing about the bedroom city near Lubbock, Texas, "Texas election law provides three options in the event of a tie: a runoff election, one candidate conceding or some form of casting lots." The coin toss falls into the last category, and apparently they settled on it because they didn't want to spend the city's money staging a run-off. "[I] asked if we could just flip a coin. It was more of a joke because I didn't know if we could do that or not," one candidate tells a local Fox outlet. "I'm good either way. I think Bruce is a good guy. So whoever wins, the city is going to be well represented," says the other. Imagine if we translated this quaint civility to national politics. Rather than ask the Supreme Court to go to all that trouble, Al Gore and George Bush could have just settled things with a thumb wrestle.

Correction: The post incorrectly stated that the city council election was in Lubbock, Texas. It was in a nearby bedroom city. 

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