Say we have a country where elections are done by random ballot. One of the voters knows someone that he thinks would be very suited for the position (MP, president, elector, etc.). The person in question may have impressed the voter with her skills, be someone who takes an unusual interest in politics and whose ideas seem well-founded, but is not known to the public at large. Then in a random ballot method, the voter can vote for the person he respects, reasoning that if his (the voter's) ballot is chosen, then there's no strategy incentive, so his favorite will be elected. And if his ballot *isn't* chosen, then it doesn't matter who he named as a favorite. On the other hand, in a deterministic method, a voter would know that this person is not well known to the public, hasn't done the marketing required or doesn't have the connections or power to get brand recognition. Therefore, voting for her is pointless. There's kind of a "compromise" incentive to vote for candidates who people have heard of, simply from coordination failure. Then it's *possible* that the random ballot outcome is better than the deterministic outcome in expectation, because getting brand recognition, having the power required to become a candidate, etc. narrows down the field of candidates and excludes people who, in retrospect, would be good picks. And if that's possible, then it's possible that for a sufficiently large assembly, filling this assembly using random ballot would be better than using a nominally proportional method. I'm not saying it's a certain thing, and the variance may still be a killer, but it's an interesting thought. Every deterministic method needs a filtering phase, an "invisible primary" if you will, that will reduce the number of candidates so that it's viable to focus on them. And that filtering phase could produce various forms of bias. What other filtering systems may exist than straight out party campaigning? And could they produce better outcomes? Could a somewhat nondeterministic method have "acceptable" variance and still be better than deterministic ones? As an alternate filtering system, I'm reminded of Fred Gohlke's Practical Democracy, which essentially involves groups of three people, randomly picked, debating and selecting one among their number for the next level. Then three randomly picked people on the second level choose a candidate for the third, and so on. Say we, instead of electing them outright, stop at a point where there's a reasonable number of candidates to do a proper election. This filtering method would be less reliant on overt marketing, but would, on the other hand, reward people who are ambitious in another way: having the endurance to go through the initial rounds and defend their positions clearly, and not doubt those positions. Would it be better, would it be worse? It's hard to say. But it is interesting to consider the wider perspective. -km