Here's a way to incorporate this idea for large groups: Ballots are ordinal with approval cutoffs.
After the ballots are counted, list the candidates in order of approval. Use just enough randomly chosen ballots to determine the Lull winner with 90% confidence: let L(0) be the candidate with least approval. Then for i = 0, 1, 2, ... move L(i) up the list until some candidate L(i+1) beats L(i) majority pairwise (in the random sample). If the majority is so close that the required confidence is not attained, then increase the sample size, etc. Then with the entire ballots set, apply Jobst's Reverse Lull method: Start with candidate A at the top of the approval list. If a majority of the ballots rank A above the Lull winner (i.e. the presumed winner if A is not elected) then elect A. Otherwise, go down the list one candidate to candidate B. Let L be the top Lull winner with approval less than B. If a majority of ballots rank B above L, then elect B, else continue down the list in the same way. In each case the comparison is of a candidate C with the L(i) with the most approval less than C's approval. If the decisions are all made in the same direction as in the sample, then the Reverse Lull winner is the same as the Lull winner, but occasionally (about ten percent of the time) there will be a surprise. If a voter knew that her ballot was going to be used in the forward Lull sample, she would be tempted to vote strategically. But in a large election, most voters would not be in the sample, so there would be little point in them voting strategically. If sincerity had any positive utility at all, it would be enough to result in sincere rankings (in a large enough election). ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info