I have made it available in http://mat.uab.es/~xmora/articles/iss2Aen.pdf .
The paper is not motivated by political elections, but by dancesport competitions. However, the problem is essentially the same, namely to combine several individual preferences into a global one.
At present, dancesport is using a system based on median ranks (called Skating System, because it was originally borrowed from figure skating). However, in the last years certain paradoxes have been observed, and some people have asked about the possibilities for a better system. Like in the case of political elections, in dancesport there is a strong reluctance to any deviation from the status quo. In spite of that, I have taken up the subject seriously and the result is the paper that I'm referring to.
After several initial attempts in other directions, finally I propose a method based upon ranked pairs.
In principle, the paper was addressed to dancesport people. So I try to keep the language as non-technical as possible. Even so, there are some parts that seem interesting also for more technical readers. In particular, I propose a method for converting the obtained ranks into more quantitative rates or quotas (based upon the information contained in the paired-comparisons matrix), which is a subject that was being debated in the EM list some months ago. On the other hand, I've included also a mathematical appendix where I give proofs of all the relevant properties of the version of ranked pairs that I'm using. As I say at the beginning of that appendix, many of the ideas of these proofs come from the original papers of Zavist and Tideman as well as the communications to the EM list and several websites related to it. However, sometimes I wasn't able to find exactly what I wanted or what I found was not clear enough. So, I finally decided to (re)produce the proofs by myself (which was more difficult than I expected).
I would appreciate very much any comments and suggestions.
Anyway, in writing this paper I've benefitted a lot from the EM list. I sincerely think that you are doing a great job.
Xavier Mora [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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