[EM] Democratic Lottery Enhancement

[raphfrk at netscape.net]

Simmons, Forest <simmonfo at up.edu> wrote:
> For the purposes of this message, a lottery is a stack of papers of 
standard
> copier size (8.5 inch by 11 inch) such that each paper has the name 
of exactly
> one candidate typed on it.
>
> This stack of papers is a lottery in the sense that a sheet of paper 
can be
> drawn at random from the stack to determine the election winner.
>
> Democratic Lottery Enhancement (DLE).
>
> 1.  Each voter is issued two copies of the initial lottery, i.e. the 
lottery
> that is considered to be in need of democratic enhancement.
>
> 2.  Each voter selects exactly half of the papers for discard, and 
then returns
> the other half of the papers.
>
> 3.  The returned papers are collated or merged to form a new, 
democraticaly
> enhanced lottery.

This is not independent of cloning ... in a big way :).

Is this a suggestion for braking something like a condorcet tie ?

If so, there is an odd number of winners in that case, which might prove
problematic.

Also, I don't think it actually enhances the lottery.

For example, assuming party A runs 1 candidate and party B runs 9 and 
both
have equal support.

Party A supporters pick A, B, B, B, B
Party B supporters pick B, B, B, B, B

Each represents 50% of the vote, so the result is that after the 
enhancement
party A still has a 10% chance.

OTOH, I guess it could be argued that a 50/50 split means that the 
public
have no opinion on the issue and the enhancement is only supposed to 
move
the probability to the party which has the most support.  In a 
condorcet tie,
I guess it would mean that one candidate has slightly more chance of 
being
elected.  However, wouldn't it be easier to just weight the candidates 
by
number of first choices or something.
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