The random name picker selects unbiased winners from custom lists of participants for social giveaways, classroom discussions, raffles, and agile standup order selections. Transparent, verifiable drawing mechanisms eliminate human selection bias while providing an engaging visual reveal animation.

### Selection Mechanics & Draw Controls

The tool splits entered text lines into individual candidate entries: - **Name List Parsing:** Parses newline-separated text, trimming whitespace and filtering blank lines (`namesText.split('\n')`). - **Animated Cycling:** Executes a 25-step rapid cycling animation through candidate names before locking onto the final winner. - **Winner Elimination Option:** When "Remove winner from list after pick" is checked, the selected name is automatically removed from active entries so they cannot win consecutive draws. - **Winner History:** Maintains a reverse-chronological list of drawn winners in component memory.

### Tested Raffle Example

With candidate list containing 8 names (`Sophia, Liam, Olivia, Noah, Emma, James, Aria, Lucas`): 1. Clicking "Pick Random Name" triggers the 25-step cycling reveal. 2. Selected Winner: **Aria** (individual probability of $1/8 = 12.5\%$). 3. If winner removal is enabled, the active roster updates to 7 remaining names ($1/7 = 14.3\%$ probability on the next draw).

### In-Browser Privacy Note

All candidate name lists, selections, and winner logs are processed strictly in local browser JavaScript state. No student rosters, employee lists, or contest entries are ever transmitted across the network or stored in external databases.