Dear Charlie, I recommend that you should use a method to create a "proportional ranking". A "proportional ranking" is a complete ranking of all candidates such that, for every possible number M, the first M candidates of this ranking represent the electorate in a manner as proportional as possible.
Proportional ranking methods are sometimes used to create a party list for "proportional representation by party lists". Here, the different parties don't know in advance how many seats they will get. Proportional ranking methods have been proposed e.g. here: 1. Colin Rosenstiel, "Producing a Party List using STV", Voting Matters, issue 9, May 1998, http://www.votingmatters.org.uk/ISSUE9/P4.HTM 2. Joseph Otten, a. "Ordered List Selection", Voting Matters, issue 9, May 1998, http://www.votingmatters.org.uk/ISSUE9/P5.HTM b. "Ordered List Selection - revisited", Voting Matters, issue 12, November 2000, http://www.votingmatters.org.uk/ISSUE12/P1.HTM 3. Markus Schulze, a. "Free Riding and Vote Management under Proportional Representation by the Single Transferable Vote", http://m-schulze.webhop.net/schulze2.pdf b. "Implementing the Schulze STV Method", http://m-schulze.webhop.net/schulze3.zip Markus Schulze ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info