In basic Instant Runoff where either equal rankings aren't allowed or N equally ranked candidates each receive 1/Nth of a vote, the shortcut of stopping the iterations when one candidate has more than 50% of the votes gives the same result as the nonshortcut of iterating until there's only one candidate left. But in some iterative methods (Instant-Runoff-1 and the new class of iterative methods we've recently been exploring for their strong LOE protection) it's possible for more than one candidate to have a majority while it's still possible to iterate further, and this candidate might not win if the iterations are allowed to continue. In some of Mike O's recent messages he's suggested stopping the iterations as soon as one or more candidates have a majority, and then picking the one with the largest majority. Is that better than iterating further? I can see its time-saving advantage when the ballots are being counted by hand, but that's not by itself a compelling reason. ---Steve (Steve Eppley [EMAIL PROTECTED])
