[EM] Viability (finding the odds after you've voted)

[Forest Simmons]

Here's why I think this revision might handle clones better:

Suppose that from favorite to detested your slot viabilities are

2,1,6,5,4,3

It could be that your two favorite slots represent clones from your party,
and the other four slots represent clones from another party that ran more
clones, and so did well on the borda count even though your party had a
majority of both first and second place votes.

The MinMax rule would merge (2,1) prematurely before the inflated clone
scores were deflated.

The recursive rule would merge the (4,3) link first, giving favorites a
chance to grow in viability ... perhaps enough to survive another round as
well.

On Mon, 4 Aug 2003, Forest Simmons wrote:

> Here's a rule that agrees with the MinMax (third refinement) rule for five
> and fewer slots, but might be more clone proof in general:
>
> We seek to find two adjacent slots to merge in a list of slots of various
> viabilities.
>
> Let X be the slot not in the center of the list with the greatest
> viability.  If X is above center, then let L be the list of slots below X,
> otherwise let L be the list of slots above X.
>
> Apply this procedure recursively to L.
>
> Stop when the recursive list L gets down to two slots.
>
> This rule is motivated more by the "approve down to the front runner,
> inclusive only when the second place guy is below front runner" strategy
> than by Weinstein's max voting power strategy.
>
> Forest
>