[EM] alternative Smith?

[James Green-Armytage]

Dear election methods fans,

	It's been awhile since I've posted. I guess that could be a good or a bad
thing, depending on how you feel about my posts. The main reason for this,
as I've mentioned earlier, is that I've just begun the economics PhD
program at UCSB. It's a tough program, and I can't be totally sure that
I'll make it through, but if I do, I hope to bring insight from the
informally academic voting methods community to the formally academic
community, and to bring some insight from my formal training to the
informal community.
	Anyway, Nicolaus Tideman called me this afternoon to tentatively
recommend a mixture of the Smith rule and the IRV rule:
1. Eliminate non-members of the Smith set.
2. If >1 candidate remains, eliminate the plurality loser.
3. Repeat steps 1 and 2 until one candidate remains.
	
	I would have to imagine that this is something that we've discussed on
the EM list, but to be honest, I can't remember when, and who said what
about it. My brain is a bit foggy right now. I'm just now remembering that
some people have fairly recently advocated CDTT/IRV, which is somewhat
similar.

	His arguments in favor of this method included the following:
1. It passes Smith, and therefore Condorcet, mutual majority, Condorcet
loser, etc.
2. It is likely to be less manipulable than other Condorcet methods. For
example, it seems to be non-manipulable in cases where the Condorcet
winner has more than 1/3 of the vote. (I'm not sure, but I think that this
is the case in most or all of the real elections NT is examining in his
investigation of strategy.) 

	Well, I just thought that I'd pass this suggestion along to the list, to
see what people have to say. 

my best,
James Green-Armytage