第一篇：2014年高考閱讀理解 31 美國小鎮(zhèn)競選鎮(zhèn)長投硬幣分勝負

美國小鎮(zhèn)競選鎮(zhèn)長投硬幣分勝負

據(jù)美國媒體11月20日報道，愛達荷州小鎮(zhèn)阿爾比恩近日的鎮(zhèn)長競選不分勝負，最終通過投擲硬幣決定誰當(dāng)下任鎮(zhèn)長。

KMVT CBS 11 reports that the town of Albion, Idaho recently decided who would be mayor for the next term with...a coin toss.This past Election Day saw the 120 voters of Albion split a vote down the middle in a race between incumbent（現(xiàn)任的）Mayor Don Bowden and his challenger, John Davis.We procured a calculator at great expense here at Yahoo and after a few hours of number crunching came to the conclusion that this means 60 votes came in for Bowden, and 60 for Davis.KMVT explains that according to Idaho law if there a tie between two candidates, a final decision will be made by the flip of a coin, which is better than Hawaii's hot dog eating contest or Wyoming's “who can keep thine hand on thine carriage longest” challenge.Now, and this is true as far as we can tell, the right to call heads or tails was won by Mayor Don Bowden when he was the closer of the two candidates to guess what number City Treasurer Mary Yeamen was thinking.Let's guess that she wrote the number down and that it wasn't just kept “in her head,” because that would make us question this very respectable political process.To paraphrase（釋義）The Hunger Games, and we're not just randomly mentioning it to help with our web traffic, how DARE you, the odds were ever in Mayor Bowden'sfavor.He correctly picked tails and now will serve a third term, knowing that literally half of the town didn't want him back.He told KMVT, “I'm relieved that we've finally done it.I would have been good with it either way...so yeah, it's historic.I don't know how many times in the past that it's happened, but it's an interesting happening.”

The coin, a pure silver dollar, was provided by D.L.Evans Bank and has been donated to the Albion Historical Society where it will be put on display.