[EM] Easy fix to Alaska's ranked-choice voting

[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

On 11/12/22 21:13, Forest Simmons wrote:
> Q&D was the simplest way to always get the same result (when the Smith 
> set was four or fewer members) as Implicit Approval Chain Climbing ... a 
> monotonic, clone free, burial resistant, Banks efficient method ... as 
> simple as possible for a method with those criteria compliances .... 
> compliances that no other method on record could truthfully claim.
> 
> So why did it get no traction?
> 
> According guys "in the trenches" it has to be an elimination method with 
> vote transfers between steps.
> 
> No such method is monotonic, but the next best thing is Yee/Bolson 
> monotonic.

Just for fun, here's an elimination method that's monotonic:

Let the score in favor of A be A's number of first preferences after all 
but one other candidate is eliminated in such a way as to maximize this 
score.

Elect the candidate with greatest score in favor.

Of course, this is just maxmax in disguise (elect the candidate whose 
greatest pairwise victory is greatest). But it's a fun joke :-)

A more difficult question: suppose that at no point is eliminating the 
current first preference winner allowed - i.e. the chain of eliminations 
can't eliminate, from a round, the pairwise winner of that round. Is the 
method still monotone? (I think so, but I'm not sure.)

Or if only below-average fpp candidates can be eliminated - vaguely 
reminiscent of Carey?

-km