[EM] Weak Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives

[Forest Simmons]

What I call "strong IIA" says (roughly) that the winner of an election
shouldn't change if any of the other candidates is removed.

Strong IIA may be too stiff a standard by which to judge common methods.
If you point out to IRV supporters that IRV doesn't satisfy strong IIA,
they will say, "So what? That's too strong a requirement."

But it seems to me that we should be able to hold any decent method to
a "weak IIA" standard which says that a definite winner of an
election shouldn't change if a definite worst candidate is removed. 

Is anybody aware of previous work done on this weak version of
Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives?

This standard is intuitively fair, as well as easy to check, so it has a
chance of paring down the field of competing methods in a way that is
understandable to the average citizen.

Furthermore, it gets right to the heart of what is wrong with all of the
usual elimination methods: the chicken and egg problem: you have to
eliminate the worst to be safe in finding the best, but you have to
eliminate best while finding the worst (at least if you consistently
follow the elimination ideal to its logical conclusion). 

Forest