So I'm thinking, what I need to concentrate on is finding the "delta score" between a candidate and the one above him. This value should always be positive, of course, and should represent the number of votes necessary to tie that candidate, but that is *not* necessarily the pairwise margin between those two candidates (since as you mention, that could be negative, which would confuse people).
I think that, rather than the pairwise margins between one candidate and the next, the more meaningful number is the number of votes each candidate received in a pairwise count against the winner. As always, there's the issue of circular ties, which is why I proposed using beatpaths in those situations.
An issue with the approach you propose is that, if there is a circular tie, the winner's score could exceed the number of votes.
So now our scoring looks like this:
B: x + 38 + 38 + 56 D: x + 38 + 38 A: x + 38 C: x
We still need to find a reasonable value to give to x, but other than that we are done.
I would think a reasonable x value would be x's votes pairwise against A.
-Adam
---- Election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
