[EM] Condorcet-Approval hybrid method

[Russ Paielli]

Hi Folks,

I just got an interesting idea. It's so simple that I'll be very 
surprised if it has not been proposed before, but I did not see it on 
Blake Cretney's methods page.

Why not combine Condorcet and Approval into a hybrid election method? 
The voter ranks the candidates, but truncates at his approval cutoff 
point. If a Condorcet winner exists he wins, otherwise the winner is 
determined from the Smith set using Approval rules, where ranked 
candidates and considered approved and unranked candidates are 
considered unapproved.

I would tend to oppose allowing equal rankings (except for implied equal 
rankings for the unranked candidates, of course). However, a variation 
would be to allow equal rankings. Another variation would be to allow 
full ranking without truncation but with an approval cutoff point 
specified separately from the rankings. For example, I could rank all 
eight candidates but somehow specify that I only want to approve the 
first three.

How would this method stack up? What would the voting strategy look 
like? And has it been proposed before? If so, when and where? Thanks.

--Russ