On the ProTest project, instead of using the Election metaphor, we had also considered using the ‘Google Search Engine’ Metaphor.
Each Test is like a web page on the internet with the content we are searching for. The ProTest Search Engine would go through all the test and give a TestRank (page rank) based on various relevance algorithms (strategies). Finally our search engine would do a rank aggregation and present the tests in a prioritized order.
If we went down the Google’s search engine metaphor, we would have ended up with a highly parallel/distributed test ranking algorithms. We would have also cached the tests and associated data.
As you can see, this design would be very different from what we have now by using the Election metaphor. System Metaphors are really powerful and helpful, if used well.