These ideas are attempts to achieve marginal improvements through some tweaking.
The first idea is to combine SSD and RP by using "dropping cost" as the common measure and utilizing the outcome of the method that has the lower dropping cost in a given election when the two outcomes do not overlap. I called this combination Dual Dropping (DD). For a description see http://sourceforge.net/docman/display_doc.php?docid=9910&group_id=48126 Why use just SSD or RP when both can be logically combined? Maybe this combination is one of the rare win-win situations that has no down side? Can anyone show an overall disadvantage to making minimizing dropping cost a goal? Another idea is what I call a "Preference Approval" ballot. All of the approved candidate rankings relative to _all_ of the other candidates are counted but the rankings of non-approved candidates against each other are not counted. In other words, the voter ranks just rees (rees=his/hers) approved candidates (any ranking of non-approved candidate is disregarded). The ballots are completed (all of the non-approved candidates are appended to the ballot as least preferred candidates) before being tallied but the tally itself does not increase the vote count of the any of the non-approved candidates (no half vote each for being ranked equal with each other). Combining approval and preference this way addresses the "comparing apples with oranges" problem of preference ballots giving equal weight to approved and non-approved candidates. Unfortunately this may also provide more strategic voting opportunity than either approval or preference balloting alone. ---- For more information about this list (subscribe, unsubscribe, FAQ, etc), please see http://www.eskimo.com/~robla/em
