How to draw a winner from a roll of raffle tickets
You have a roll of tickets and a pile of stubs. Here is how to pick the winning number without a bowl, and the one mistake that picks a number nobody holds.
You bought the roll. You handed out the tickets, everybody kept one half and you kept the other. Now you have a shoebox of folded stubs and a room waiting.
The bowl works, mostly. It also has three problems nobody talks about. Folded stubs stick together, so the ones that went in last sit on top. The ones at the bottom never move no matter how hard you shake it. And somebody has to reach in, which means somebody is watching them reach in.
There is a simpler way, and it uses the numbers already printed on your tickets.
Read your roll
Every ticket on a roll is numbered in sequence. Find the first number you handed out and the last one. That is your range, and those two numbers are all you need.
Open Quick Draw, type them in, and press the button. It picks one number at random from that range. Whoever is holding it wins.
No bowl, no folding, no reaching.
The one mistake worth avoiding
Enter the range you actually gave out, not the range printed on the roll.
If the roll starts at 251 and you handed out tickets up to 398, your range is 251 to 398. Enter 251 to 1250 because that is what the roll holds, and the draw can land on a number that is still sitting on the spool in your bag. Now you are standing in front of a room re-drawing, and the second draw always looks worse than the first.
Write down the last number you handed out before you start. It takes five seconds and it is the only preparation this needs.
Draw it where people can see
Put the range in before you begin, so the room sees you set it rather than type it after. Then press the button once, out loud, in front of everybody.
The reason a bowl feels fair is that people can watch it. The reason a number generator feels fair is the same. It only works if you do it in the open.
If nobody claims it
Somebody always loses a ticket. Announce the number, give it a minute, and if nobody comes forward, draw again from the same range. Say that rule out loud before the first draw and nobody argues with the second one.
If you do this more than once a year
At some point the roll stops being worth it. You are buying tickets, tearing tickets, collecting stubs, and storing a shoebox until the day of.
geRaff does the same thing without any of that. People scan a code with their own phone, type their name, and they are in. Entering is free, there is no account, and the draw happens live on a screen with the winner’s name on it instead of a number somebody has to go looking for.
The roll is a fine way to run one raffle. It is a bad way to run one every month.
The live Showtime stage, recorded. The names are a test raffle.
Open Quick Draw to draw from a roll you already have, or see how a raffle without tickets works.