Virginia just elected a Republican by drawing names out of a bowl

The delegate from the 94th House District in Virginia was elected Thursday by drawing names out of a bowl. The lucky winner was Republican David Yancey, the incumbent, who defeated Democrat Shelly Simonds in their district in the Newport News area of Virginia.

While drawing names to determine an election has happened before in Virginia, what made today’s luck-of-the-draw unique was that it also determined whether the Virginia House of Delegates would be split down the middle between Democrats and Republicans or if Republicans would continue to control the legislative body, something the GOP has done for nearly two decades.

If Simonds had won and there had been no other legal challenges, the two parties would have had to figure out how to share power in Virginia’s House of Delegates.

Originally, Simonds lost the race by 10 votes and asked for a recount. After that recount, she appeared to have won by one vote. But then Yancey’s campaign brought a legal challenge, resulting in a panel of judges deciding to count an oddly-marked ballot for Yancey. That created a tie in the race. There were multiple legal back-and-forths, but in the end the Virginia Board of Elections put a 1705 law into practice to break the tie through a random lottery.

There were some pretty big stakes. Democrats’ strong performance bolstered hopes for expanded Medicaid coverage for low-income Virginians under the Affordable Care Act. Something current Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, had been calling for his entire time in office but couldn’t get passed through a Republican state Legislature. It's unlikely that the soon-to-be-seated new democratic governor will have much more success.

Simonds was noncommittal about whether her legal team would challenge today’s results. “The law is not really clear on if, after a recount and there's a tie, you can ask for another recount,” she said in an interview with VICE News, before her name was not selected. “So we will see if it's possible to ask for another recount.”

And after her name was not chosen, she said, “I would’ve been much more at peace with ending this on a game of chance, if I hadn’t won the recount. I feel like there’s still a real old boys network in Virginia, and this is the legacy of that.”

It’s not the first time that politics have been determined through sheer luck. In 2015, for example, the outcome of a race for a Mississippi House seat was decided by candidates drawing straws.