Wow, you actualy decided the winner by rolling a die? How amazingly sensible. I wish we Americans had that much sence.
In Florida in 2000 the official result had Bush beating Gore by a 537 votes – out of approximately six million cast. I don’t think the official result was valid, but it was nonetheless offical. The rules did not allow anything to be done to set things right; we were stuck with the official result.
In addititon to all the other problems with the FL election, the official result was a statistical tie. A statistical tie is said to have occurred when the margin between the first and second place finishers is less than the margin of error in the counting methods. Declaring an official winner on the basis of such a narrow margin is not statistically valid.
At the time, scientist Stephen Jay Gould and mathmetician J.A. Paulos both pointed out that the results were a statistical tie. One or both suggested that the proper solution was to flip a coin. But no serious consideration was given to this idea.
Many people seem to feel that the lesson of the 2000 election is that we need to either scrap the Electoral College or modify its winner-take-all aspect. I think an equally important lesson is that, when it comes to elections, we need better rules. We need a number of new rules. One needed rule would address the question of what is to be done when an election result is a statistical tie. Do we have a runoff election between the top two vote-getters, and hope that, with the smallfry out of the picture, a clear winner will emerge? Or do we flip a coin? Or what?