Random ballot (original) (raw)

The random ballot, single stochastic vote, or lottery voting is an electoral system in which an election is decided on the basis of a single randomly selected ballot. It is closely related to random dictatorship; the latter is a general rule for social choice, while random ballot is an application of this general rule for electing candidates in multi-constituency bodies. Whilst appearing superficially chaotic, the system has the potential to retain the most attractive characteristics of both first past the post and proportional representation systems in elections to multi-constituency bodies. Random dictatorship was first described in 1977 by Allan Gibbard. Its application to elections was first described in 1984 by Akhil Reed Amar,.