Politics is dumb.
A Virginia elections official reached into an artsy stoneware bowl, pulled out a name and declared Republican David Yancey the winner of a House of Delegates race that could determine which political party controls the chamber.
Virginia staged a dramatic, rare election lottery, livestreamed across the country, to settle a tie between Yancey, an incumbent from Newport News, and Democrat Shelly Simonds.
The spectacle drew national attention as an odd way to decide a highly consequential contest. But it might not be the last word in a saga that’s taken more turns than the clay that went into that wheel-thrown bowl, borrowed for the occasion from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts .