Marbleous Decision in Tied Board Election

It all came down to a single white marble.

The two candidates for a seat on the Culver City Board of Education stood shoulder to shoulder Monday as they reached simultaneously into paper bags, one filled with eight red marbles and one with eight blue ones -- and each with a single white marble.

He who pulled out a white marble would win the seat for which they had tied -- 1,141 votes to 1,141 votes -- in the November election.

As board President Stewart Bubar and challenger Roger Maxwell each reached in for his first marble, silence filled the small board room crammed with more than 40 people.

Then the crowd gasped.

Bubar had picked red, Maxwell blue.

“Take a breath,” Supt. Laura McGaughey said.

Round two produced two more colored marbles So did round three.

Each time, the candidates pointedly looked at the other man’s marble first before daring to look at his own. Each time, the group gasped.

Then, on the fourth try, Bubar emerged with a white marble.

“Oh my gosh, that’s it?” asked McGaughey.

The month-long tie had been decided in just eight minutes.

“When I saw the white one, I didn’t believe it,” said Bubar, who will be sworn in tonight. “I wanted to make sure it was really white.”

Three candidates had vied for two seats on the five-member board. Incumbent Marla Wolkowitz won the election outright with 1,267 votes, while Maxwell, a retired parole officer, and Bubar, a middle school teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District, came in second with identical votes.

To decide the winner, district officials were forced to rely on a code passed in 1997 that calls for a game of chance.

Although their election code allowed the option of a runoff, district officials said that would have cost about $85,000, a price tag the school system could not afford.

After much debate, officials agreed on the idea of marbles.

It was, some said, a fair way to avoid a long runoff process, often unappealing to voters.

“The people’s voices have been heard,” said Elizabeth Garrett, director of USC’s Center for the Study of Law and Politics. “There has to be some kind of finality. This is fair because each person has an equal shot.”

Although rare, ties are more common in smaller cities. In 2000, a coin toss was needed to break a tie for the mayoral seat of Fife Lake Township, Mich.

Another coin toss was needed last month in Independence Township, Ohio, to break a tie in the city clerk position.