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Duel Voting: Random Ballot

The "Direct Democracy Duel" is conducted by a system we call Modified Random Ballot (MRB). Every day, voters are offered four options for the following day's Duel. Each voter indicates which options they would be happy to play, and votes for each of those options. One person's ballot is then chosen at random, and one of the options they voted for is randomly selected to the be the following day's Duel.

This has several advantages over traditional systems like First Past The Post, in which the option with the most votes would always win. These include:

• In the long run, people with minority preferences will always get a chance to play the Duel they want. For example, imagine that the same two options are offered every day, with 51% of people liking Option A and the other 49% liking Option B. Under FPTP, it would be Option A every day; under MRB, it would be Option A 51% of the time and Option B 49% of the time, which is a much fairer reflection of people's preferences.
• There is no point in tactical voting, such as voting for your second preference because you believe that your first preference has no real chance of winning. With MRB, every vote has a chance to win! So you can go ahead and express your real opinion without having to second-guess everyone else.
• Because unusual options can win, people who play the Duel will experience plenty of variety in the formats, and may even discover a liking for something they'd never considered playing before.

If you enjoyed this brief foray into psephology, Wikipedia has a pretty good series of articles on the subject.