[EM] Using Schulze Election Method to elect a flexible amount of winners

[Paul Smits]

Dear election enthusiasts,

First of all I would like to congratulate you on the great wealth of works
and ideas you brought into the world of voting/election methods. Even
though it may be out of the scope of your focus, I have a consideration I
would like to consult you on. If I came to the wrong place, let me know.

In my organisation we are implementing the Schulze method to all situations
where a single winner or sorted list of winners has to be chosen from more
than two options. We basically did a straight implementation from the
wikipedia pseudocode into our own online voting system.

Now the question arose how we could use the Schulze method in a decision
where the amount of winners is also up for debate. We used to make this
decision by conducting an approval vote with a certain threshold for
winners. I was not happy about this slightly arbitrary choice of threshold.
Now some colleagues wish to again see some value by which the quantity of
support for all the candidates can be understood.

I propose to use the Schulze method and add an option of "no further
winner" to the list of candidates, which is comparable to what is defined
as the "status quo" as mr Schulze described in his paper in the section
super-majorities. I.e. the status quo is 'no winners', and each candidate
has to beat the option of 'no winners' in order to qualify.

Would you think this is an adequate procedure to make this decision on both
the choice of winners and the amount of winners? I am aware there is a risk
of electing no candidates, or all candidates. But at least it is less
artificial than a fixed percentage of votes as was done before.

Best regards,

Paul L. Smits
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/attachments/20161003/dee5b457/attachment-0001.htm>