Humiliated? When lotteries go wrong.

Posted on December 24, 2011 by Conall Boyle

We have already seen one major catastrophe in 2011 with a lottery allocation procedure, when the ‘Green Card’ went wrong. There were a reported 22,000 people world-wide who thought that they had won, and were then told that they hadn’t.

How did these lottery-losers feel? ‘Humiliated’ according to a paper by two kleroterians Jon Dolle and Anne Newman.

Badly-run lotteries leave the participants, and even the winners, feeling humiliated. Even a properly-run lottery may leave both winners and losers feeling bad, if there is not complete transparency about the randomisation mechanisms used. Continue reading →

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