every seat in the virginia house of delegates was up. all 100 seats in that house of the state legislature, and in 2017 when the results wer were tallied on election night, republicans had 50, democrats had 49 and the final seat was a tie. literally a tie. the democrat and the republican in the last race both got the exact same number of votes. in the end, the way they decided that race was they pulled the winner s name out of a bowl. they put both candidates names in separate film canisters, pulled one out of a bowl. that person got to be the elected official in the legislative district. it ended up being the republican, and that s how the republicans got a 51 seat majority in the house of delegates after the 2017 election. in addition to that unexpected problem of a literal tie in one race, there was another problem, though. if the democrat had won that virtual coin toss, that would have meant that the virginia house of delegates would have also found itself in a dead even