Write-In Lottery Voting

[Brian Langstraat]

Write-In Lottery Voting (WILV) would allow voters to vote for any candidate with the final election winner(s) statistically approaching actual proportional representation as the number of winners increases.

Write-In Only Voting (not Mail-In Voting) and Write-In Asset Voting are discussed in the posts:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/electionscience/nOS7FHstz_g

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/electionscience/JmJ54V9oQ6M

Information about Lottery Voting is at:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_ballot

Overview of WILV:

Voters would fill-in ballots by writing-in a list of candidate(s) up to the number of winners.

Ballot(s) are randomly selected in a lottery equal to the number of winners.

The top-listed, non-winner candidate on each selected ballot would become a winner.

More Detail:

Every citizen is assigned a unique (random ten-digit) identification (ID) number (similar to a Social Security Number).

Each candidate would publish their ID number as part of their campaign.

Voters would be allowed to bring a list of ID numbers with them to the voting booth.

Voters would fill-out their ballots using the ID number (with filled-in bubbles) for each candidate up to the number of winners.

Ballots would be placed in voting machines that would briefly and privately display the names matching the ID number(s) of the candidate(s) that the voter selected.

If the displayed candidates' names are incorrect, then the voter can correct errors to avoid spoiled ballots.

After the conclusion of voting, random precinct(s) are selected from all the respective precincts (weighted by number of votes cast in each) equal to the number of winners.

In each selected precinct, a ballot is randomly selected in a lottery.

  The top-listed candidate on each selected ballot is a winner.

  If a top-listed candidate is already a winner or refuses the office, then a top-most non-winner candidate on each selected ballot would become a winner.

  If a top-listed candidate is already a winner or refuses the office and no non-winner candidate is listed, then a new random ballot from a new random precinct is selected.

This process continues until all of the winners are selected.

WILV may not work well for single-member or small multi-member elections, but could work very well in large multi-member elections.

[Brian Langstraat]

A major concern for random ballot voting systems is the selection of extremist candidates.

If the selected candidates were used to elect a final winner, then this concern would be reduced.

Thus, a scenario where WILV may be successful would be selecting state electors for the electoral college that elect the U.S. president, especially for large states.

Currently, almost all electors are highly partisan members of the party that wins the majority in each state.

An electoral college with randomly selected electors would have a spectrum of political beliefs, so the winning presidential candidate would need to appeal to a diverse constituency.

Presidential candidates predicting the election results would be very difficult, so they would need to campaign broadly to reach the most potential voters/electors.

[Brian Olson]

randomness is mathematically nifty but i can't imagine a society that actually wants decisions made that way. it's fine as a tiebreaker at the end of a process, but it just doesn't make sense to me as a first-round tool. random election sounds great in computer science if i'm electing between several equivalent computers and i just need to break a deadlock, but for representative democracy and choosing between several different people who will use their elected power in different ways i want a deterministic process that as best possible represents the voters.

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[Brian Langstraat]

Brian,

I am exploring Write-In Only voting systems that minimize strategic voting (knowing how others may vote).

A vote for a relatively unknown friend and a vote for a famous politician would contribute equally to the election winner(s).

randomness is mathematically nifty but i can't imagine a society that actually wants decisions made that way.

Randomness has been used for selecting representatives in democratic societies, including by ancient Athenians and modern jury selection.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition

for representative democracy and choosing between several different people who will use their elected power in different ways i want a deterministic process that as best possible represents the voters.

I would prefer a deterministic process to stochastic processes such as Asset and Lottery voting, but such a process may not exist.

Plurality, ranked, and rated systems dismiss votes for relatively unknown candidates or require having an opinion on almost every possible candidate to retain voting power.

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[Brian Langstraat]

Apparently, a voting system very similar to Write-In Lottery Voting (WILV) has been contemplated in detail.

Thanks to Neal McBurnett for posting this under the Blockchain Topic (https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/electionscience/U4VQGbf0mz8):

"One big step in that direction is Random-Sample Voting (RSV): http://rsvoting.org/ which allows any organization to relatively inexpensively conduct an election (i.e. a very public and trusted poll) on any topic, including any well-established roster of eligible voters."

RSV seems to be a much better system than WILV (even if developed further), except its complexity may not be understood and trusted by the average voter.