Here's a suggestion for detecting clone sets based on Range Ballots: Define the distance between two candidates as the square root of the sum (over the ballots) of the squared diffference of their respective ratings.
If the ballots are approval style, this becomes the square root of the number of ballots on which just one of the two candidates is approved. Use these distances to do a cluster analysis of the candidates. The tree structure of the clusters gives the tree structure of the clone sets. If you have a clone dependent method, like Copeland, that you would like to "de-clone," you might find this clone set detectiion method to be useful. ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
