I can see that I needn't have worried about taking the wind out of anybody sails. Since my message was posted, the challenge has continued to generate a lot of lively discussion and clever ideas, including some that I completely overlooked.
The main thing I overlooked was vote trading. So there are two main devices for solving the challenge: vote trading and randomness. Jobst suggested a way of combining them: asset voting with random ballot as the base method, so that probabilities are traded. We could also combine them into a DYN version of D2MAC. The basic ballots are DYN ballots. Voters decide Yes/No for each candidate that they feel sure about, and then Delegate the remaining Y/N votes to one of the candidates, presumably their favorite. After all of the Y/N votes have been completed by the proxies, two ballots are drawn at random. If there is a candidate that was (either directly or by proxy) voted Yes on both ballots, then the common Yes candidate with the greatest number of Y's (from the other voters or their proxies) is elected. Otherwise the favorite (i.e. proxy candidate) of the first drawn ballot chooses the winner. That's just an idea meant to stimulate exploration of further possibilities. Forest ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
