The candidate who will win election to an at-large seat on the Mount Dora City Council will get elected by some sort of tiebreaker, a judge ruled Thursday.

A judge in Lake County said the race between incumbent Nick Girone and Marie Rich, which ended in a 50-50 tie, said the winner won't be decided by voters.

A group of voters argued the race should go to a runoff election because that's what it says in the city's charter, but Mount Dora City Attorney Cliff Shepard and Judge Mark Nacke disagreed.

"This is not a runoff. If the court grants what is being requested, this will be a do-over, it will be another election," Shepard argued before the judge.

Voters challenged Shepard's interpretation of the city's charter. Shepard said a tie should be settled by a tiebreaker known as "drawing of lots."

Girone supported a runoff, but Rich was joined in court by an attorney fighting for a tiebreaker.

"If it went to re-election, I don't think it's fair to put the burden of re-election on taxpayers," Rich said.

City Council members had their say Tuesday. The City Council also tied when voting to have a runoff before eventually settling on a tiebreaker.

After testimony from Mount Dora's clerk and a former City Council member, the judge decided in favor of state law, calling for the "drawing of lots," saying that section of the charter didn't deal with ties.

"I'm disappointed because the language is pretty clear if you have a tie, you don't have a majority," said James Homich, attorney for the voters.

Shepard said he studied Lake County history and found four other cities have faced similar dilemmas of how to deal with a tie vote in the past 20 years.

"I looked at all their charters looking for a way to break ties in their charters, and they all deferred to state law," Shepard said. "So, it's not uncommon to not have a provision in order to break ties, and that’s what we successfully argued today."

It's now up to the Mount Dora City Council to decide how to break the tie, with the most likely options being a coin toss, drawing straws or pulling a name out of a hat.

The tiebreaker could happen at the Dec. 2 meeting of the Mount Dora City Council.