New pairwise tie-breaker

[Steve Eppley]

DEMOREP1 wrote:
>Steve E wrote:
>>It's similar to one of the methods (Young?) in Bruce's list. The
>>principle is to find the smallest modifications of the ballots
>>which would cause one of the candidates to beat all of the others
>>pairwise, then call this candidate the winner.

>Changing the votes of the voters is highly improper. One must take
>the voters as one finds them (i.e. how they have actually voted).

This objection seems ridiculous to me.  I never suggested altering
the ballots.  The method I described elects the candidate who
would have been beats-all *if* some of the ballots had been
different.  There's nothing at all "improper" about electing the 
candidate who is the closest to being the Beats-All candidate, if 
it's considered proper to elect the Beats-All candidate when there 
is one.

However, the neo-Dodgson method I described has too many other flaws.

---Steve     (Steve Eppley    seppley at alumni.caltech.edu)