[EM] Approval/Ranked Pairs hybrid

[Forest Simmons]

Here's another idea along these lines in a different direction.

The margins versus winning votes controversy seems to be a question of
priorities of majorities, loosely speaking, at least in the context of
Ranked Pairs.

Suppose that (infinitely patient) voters voted directly on the order of
importance of the head-to-head contests by rating each contest (rather
than candidate) as being important or unimportant.  The contest that was
rated as important on the greatest number of ballots would be the first
one to be frozen into the Ranked Pairs line-up, regardless of the
magnitude of the margin or the number of winning votes in the eventual
outcome of that head-to-head contest.

Etc.

Now, since real voters don't have infinite patience, why not just make the
assumption that any contest that straddles the approval line on a ballot
is one considered to be important by the voter of that ballot, and that
the others are relatively unimportant to that voter.

Forest