[EM] Manual Construction of Smith Set

[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

On 13.01.2022 04:46, Richard, the VoteFair guy wrote:
> Thank you Forest, Colin, and Kristofer for answering my question about
> how to manually identify the Smith set.
> 
> I now better understand how to do this on paper.
> 
> However, I'm still uncertain how it could be done in a public setting
> such as on stage in a school auditorium, with an audience watching to
> ensure the process is fair. (And creating a video of the process.)

My O(n^2) method would be pretty transparent, I think; it would just get
unwieldy very fast.

First you let each person represent a candidate, and then, for each
person, you have that person ask "do I beat A, B, C..." in turn. This
gives the number of candidates that candidate beats, i.e. the Copeland
score.

Let there be a dividing line: everybody to the right (say) of that line
is in the provisional Smith set, everybody to the left is not. Move the
Copeland winner to the right of the line.

Then ask each other candidate if he beats the first member, second
member, etc. of that set. If yes, move him up to the other side of the
line. If anyone was moved to the right of the line as part of this
round, restart from the first candidate to the left of the line once
you've asked all of them; otherwise, the process is done and the
candidates on the right constitute the Smith set.

-km