yes, this is (as Chris Benham said) the same as truncating, at least as "truncating" is usually interpreted.
By the way, note that IRV is immune to the DH3 pathology while Condorcet methods get hurt by it. So DH3 is a good reason to prefer IRV over Condorcet methods. However, there are also reasons to prefer Condorcet over IRV, such as, monotonicity, Condorcet winners get elected, and IRV can suffer from the winner=loser (reversal failure) pathology whereas some Condrocet methods such as Schulze are immune to it. So then you are saying that you are unhappy for good reason with Condorcet and also unhappy for good reason with IRV... at which point you realize that Range Voting is the cat's meow. :) ---- election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
