Tossing coins to choose a Mayor

SPAIN (Agencies) The possibility of this happening in the Campo de Gibraltar is not as remote as it might seem, given the very close ballots in places such as San Roque and Jimena, for example. But Mariano González, of the Popular Party (PP), will be the mayor of Lújar, Granada province, after calling heads on a coin toss to resolve a tied ballot in the May 22 elections in the small town of 500 inhabitants. The same process was carried out in Os Blancos, Ourense, where the PP and the Galician Popular Alternative Party each garnered 393 votes. In that contest, PP candidate Juan Manuel Andrade will take his seat in the town hall after correctly divining the fall of the coin. His Socialist Party (PSOE) opponent, Diego Estévez Cabrera, who had been in the post until now with a 13-vote differential, took the tie-breaker with sporting good grace. González, though, opined that in these cases a second vote would be more logical.

The PP has fortune on its side when a piece of small change is gyrating through the air. In the previous local elections the conservative candidate in Carataunas, Granada, was elected thanks to chance. The PP had appealed against two votes for the PSOE, cast by a Romanian couple who had put their census card in the envelope along with the voting paper. Finally, these two votes were accepted, resulting in a tie on 161 votes apiece. "It's been a long story, which we shouldn't have dragged out quite as much," said Andrade.