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water-rationing · desalination · corruption · district-lottery
The desalination lottery in my district is rigged and I can prove it — 3,000 applicants, 40 slots, and the same four surnames keep winning
DJ
deltaboy_juniorOP2124-07-20
Ok the desal lottery for the new plant capacity. 3,000 of us put in, 40 households get the priority tap. I pulled two years of winner lists off the public board and four surnames show up eleven times between them. Eleven. In a 'random' draw. I run numbers on delivery routes all day, I know what random looks like and this ain't it. Somebody explain to me how the same families keep winning the water raffle in the district with the driest taps.
SR
standpipe_rani ↩ deltaboy_junior2124-07-20
junior, I chair a rationing committee two districts over and I'll tell you exactly how, because it's boring and legal and that's the worst part. The 'random' draw almost certainly has priority weightings — medical need, dependents, prior-year misses — and if one extended family shares an address block that's flagged for any of those, they inherit the weight collectively. It's probably not a bribe. It's a formula somebody wrote that quietly rewards being already-documented. Pull the weighting rules, not the winner list. That's where the rigging hides, if it's there.
GP
gridghost_paxmoderator ↩ standpipe_rani2124-07-20
Mod: keeping this open because it's a fair, checkable question — but junior, hold the 'rigged' framing until the weighting rules are on the table, per rani. Naming four surnames in public before we know if it's a formula or a favor is how threads get someone hurt over what turns out to be a disability weighting. Post the draw's published methodology (every district plant has to file one) and I'll help you read it. If there's no filed methodology, THEN you've got a real story.