[EM] Superchargers and Afterburners

[Forest Simmons]

Many postings have suggested supercharging a method by eliminating up
front all candidates who are not in the Smith set.  So supercharged Borda
would be Borda restricted to the Smith set, supercharged IRV would be IRV
restricted to the Smith set, etc.

How about an afterburner?

The method winner would be the input into the afterburner.  For example
start with the Approval winner as input into the afterburner.

One example of an afterburner would be this:

Suppose that there are N candidates, and call the input candidate C_0.

Then for n from 1 to N
   If C_(n-1) is a beats-all candidate then let C_n = C_(n-1)
      Else let C_n be the candidate with the greatest victory over C_(n-1)
   End If
Next n.

If the sequence of candidates generated by this method cycles, then break
the cycle at its weakest link.

[Alternately, go with the first repeated candidate in the cycle.]

[Alternately, just take the last candidate C_N as winner.]

Any comments on this afterburner?

Any other ideas for an afterburner?

It seems to me that putting a suitable supercharger on the front end and a
suitable afterburner on the back end could turn even Borda or Plurality
into an acceptable method.

Forest