Twins entering the DV lottery

[confuseddv]

Hi everyone,

I have a question regarding me and my twin entering the DV lottery together. Basically, we are of different genders (he's male and I'm female) but we've got almost identical names (only a single letter difference), and obviously the same date of birth, city of birth, address, same level of education, status, etc. I've heard that the DV lottery system can automatically detect multiple entries and I'm fearful that the system will falsely detect both our entries as the same person and so we get disqualified. This has happened to us many times before (school systems, hospitals) but I'm not sure the DV system works.

Does anyone have any thoughts?

 

[SusieQQQ]

Hi everyone,

I have a question regarding me and my twin entering the DV lottery together. Basically, we are of different genders (he's male and I'm female) but we've got almost identical names (only a single letter difference), and obviously the same date of birth, city of birth, address, same level of education, status, etc. I've heard that the DV lottery system can automatically detect multiple entries and I'm fearful that the system will falsely detect both our entries as the same person and so we get disqualified. This has happened to us many times before (school systems, hospitals) but I'm not sure the DV system works.

Does anyone have any thoughts?

But you're different genders, it will pick that up so it should be obvious it's not the same person...

 

[Alien2010]

Very interesting and a valid question, imho.
As @SusieQQQ pointed out different genders of the twins (and presumably different looks on the pictures) will be helpful.

But for n > 2, then there will be at least 2 siblings of the same gender (by Dirichlet's Box Principle).
I guess serious advance planning is required (on the parents behalf) for DV purposes.
I would be surprised if the computer can tell n-tuplets apart from their respective 600 x 600 photos when they are of the same gender.

 

[Britsimon]

So the twins can enter and take their chances, or enter one year at a time. It's a lottery - so it isn't like some right is going to be lost because of the risk. Hardly something to be "fearful" about.

 

[SusieQQQ]

It's also surely only when the twins are pretty young that all details other than name are identical even if they're identical twins. Unless they study exactly the same degree at the same university and take the same jobs at the same company and continue to live at the same address.... And presumably they'll, you know, marry not-the-same-person in due course. Etc.

 

[guestgulkan]

It wouldn't surprise me if the fraud detection checking algorithms are a little flakey and filter them out by accident.

 

[confuseddv]

Thanks everyone for the replies! You have no idea how many times systems (and people) have confused us before, even though we're different genders. I couldn't vote this year because the system thought me and my brother was the same person and I'd been deregistered. But I suppose the DV system uses more advanced technology, but my thoughts are if it should work, they should be able to pick up near-identical entries too. Because surely someone can just submit multiple entries with a few letter differences in their name for example and then later claim it was just a mistake. However, if they judge identical entries solely by photographs, then I'm confident they won't filter us out by accident.

 

[SusieQQQ]

Thanks everyone for the replies! You have no idea how many times systems (and people) have confused us before, even though we're different genders. I couldn't vote this year because the system thought me and my brother was the same person and I'd been deregistered. But I suppose the DV system uses more advanced technology, but my thoughts are if it should work, they should be able to pick up near-identical entries too. Because surely someone can just submit multiple entries with a few letter differences in their name for example and then later claim it was just a mistake. However, if they judge identical entries solely by photographs, then I'm confident they won't filter us out by accident.

It's not solely by photograph, but the entries would have to be absolutely identical. As you say it so easy to say a spelling mistake was an error when it was actually an attempt to submit multiple entries, which is why people with errors in their names often get denied at interview. I mean, there are people out there with identical names, they're not going to disqualify everyone who is unfortunate enough to be called the same thing.