20 January 2008

luck of the draw, luck be a lady, one person one vote, don't try this at home, vox populi, etc. etc.

What happens in Vegas ... is certifiably nuts sometimes:

You know you're in Vegas when victory at a caucus precinct comes in the form of a card draw ...

Tom Komenda told CNN there was an even number of supporters for the two candidates (Clinton and Obama)— 48 each. But the caucus had five delegates, so they couldn't be split evenly.

How to break the tie? A good old fashioned card draw.

Komenda said a sealed deck was unwrapped. But as the shuffling started, he was concerned that the shuffler might have been shuffling in a way that exposed the faces of the cards to some of the nervous onlookers.

"I said, 'Wait wait wait — if we have to do this idiotic thing with cards, we're going to shuffle them the way they're supposed to be shuffled,'" he told CNN, laughing. "Then they said, 'If you want to shuffle, come down here and shuffle. So I went down and shuffled!"

Komenda says an Obama supporter drew first, and up came the ten of spades. Next, a Clinton supporter drew, and ... (cue the suspense music, switch to tight closeups of sweat on participants' foreheads, slo mo, closeup of the crisp shiny deck of cards, all that Hollywood magic stuff*) ... a queen of hearts decided the tie-breaker in favor of Clinton. So the final delegate count was two delegates for Obama, and three for Clinton.

It all ended, he said, in "cheers from one side of the room, groans and boos from the other."
Ahhh, democracy.

*all embellishments mine