Chris quoted Steve Eppley's post at: http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/1997-March/001392.html
Hi Chris, Thank you for the reference! That basically looks like the same idea, with only subtle differences. I agree that S/WPO strikes a pretty good balance between strategic resistance and simplicity of explanation, hence it might not be a bad choice for a first-wave Condorcet method. Here's the main (minor, but worth noting) difference I see between Steve's original proposal and my current understanding of S/WPO... Steve's method counts > initially as >, and then changes it to = if there is no CW. Thus, the direction of the pairwise defeats could change in the second count. My version of S/WPO, on the other hand, counts > as > when it comes to the direction of the defeat (whether there is a CW or not), but counts it as = for the purpose of finding the strength of the defeats. Thus the initial defeat directions are preserved. I think that the latter approach is preferable, in that it has greater continuity than the first. (Note that my version of AERLO/ATLO differs from Mike Ossipoff's definition in a similar way.) my best, James Green-Armytage ---- Election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info