I think I should explain this a bit further and add more examples and possible methods.
For the moment, just focus on the naive Overvote and DIE method Naive Auction Range. I am not quite sure of the time complexity of this, but two conditions would allow it to terminate its loop early: 1) if the result of the post-killing overvoters election is exactly the same or if no overvotes are found --exceeding unlikely, but still a good point to mention. To be perfectly honest, I haven't done much initial testing on this, but I will have a program for it ready by about err some time tomorrow, maybe. I am too tired to program *YAWN* More on this issue: as you can probably guess, many improvements can be made to overvote and die. One of them I suggested was aallowing ballots to be reduced. Another one is falling back to a different type of ballot. ONe decreed to be a non-overvote. Like an SNTV ballot, an STV ballot, a CV ballot, a PBV ballot etc. This type of iteration (I think) achieves relatively good clone immunity. Granted, it isn't perfect. However, the Reweighted Overvote and Die method would allow this to some extent. You could probably do one better by incorporating a cardinal type element in it That way, if you overvote, you can drop candidates such that you are not overvoting anymore. This could also be achieved by having multiple ballots. When one ballot is deemed illegal due to overvoting, you would switch over to the highest ranked working ballot. One could also allow some level of overvote forgiveness... or one could make overvote elimination probabilistic. In a later, more structured email, I will have about a dozen or so variants. Greg Nisbet The Ten Commandments contain 297 words. The Bill of Rights is stated in 463 words. Lincoln's Gettysburg Address contains 266 words. A recent federal directive to regulate the price of cabbage contains 26,911 words. – The Atlanta Journal ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
