Former President Donald Trump just won an election -- albeit one in which he was not running for a job that he is unlikely to take in an office that he almost certainly was completely unaware of.
The election that Trump just won was for a board seat in the Hubbard Rural Fire Protection District in Oregon, according to the Conservative Brief.
Due to a dearth of actual candidates for the position, there was a multitude of write-ins by voters, of which the former president was included, and he ultimately prevailed following a tie-breaking dice roll by election officials.
The Salem Statesman Journal reported that three of the five seats on the Hubbard Rural Fire Protection District board in Western Oregon were up for grabs in an off-year election but only two of the incumbents in those seats registered as candidates and easily won re-election.
Around 20 different names were written in by voters for the open and unpaid board position in the low-turnout election, and the former president, along with four others, received two votes, which triggered an automatic recount followed by a "game of chance" -- in this case, a dice roll -- to break the tie, per state election rules.
Stand-ins for the five write-in candidates each took a turn rolling a 12-sided dice and three of them, including Trump's stand-in, rolled a 10, which precipitated a second round of dice rolls that Trump prevailed in when his stand-in rolled a 12.
Hubbard Fire Chief Michael Kahrmann told the outlet, "The candidate who won the dice roll off was Donald Trump and because he doesn’t live or own property in the district, the next step would be to determine if either of the other two candidates who won the dice roll are interested."
If neither of the other two candidates whose stand-ins rolled a 10 in the first round are uninterested in the job, then the position will be declared vacant and the board will simply appoint somebody to the position -- a dilemma that will undoubtedly be discussed during the board's next meeting on July 12.
The Statesman Journal noted that the Hubbard Rural Fire Protection District serves around 5,000 residents and only has six paid employees, two of whom are only seasonal, along with slightly more than two dozen unpaid volunteers.
It was less than a month ago that former President Trump won another election of sorts when he emerged victorious from the straw poll conducted during the Western Conservative Summit in June with 40.3% support compared to the runner-up, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who received 35.8% support, according to Breitbart.
Jeff Hunt, a co-chair of the event, noted that there was now a "two-horse race" for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, and said, "The results are clear -- Western grassroots conservatives want a fighter who will take on the radical Left and the institutions that are destroying America’s founding principles."
The outlet noted that the straw poll was conducted just one day after the unveiling of the federal indictment against the former president over his alleged unlawful retention of government documents following his exit from the White House in early 2021.
Meanwhile, according to the RealClearPolitics average of polls, Trump is the clear front-runner of the GOP pack with 52.4% support, giving him a 30.9-point lead over DeSantis, who sits in a distant but solid second-place position with 21.5% support among Republican primary voters.
The race between those two candidates had previously been much closer, but Trump quite clearly received boosts to his support -- and DeSantis suffered a decline -- following the criminal indictment by Manhattan's progressive district attorney in New York followed by the more recent indictment by Special Counsel Jack Smith.
