If we measure defeat strength of A over B, primarily by whether or not A covers B, and secondarily by the number of winning votes, we get new versions of Ranked Pairs, River, and Beatpath. These new versions retain all of the best properties of their winning votes versions, while always electing uncovered alternatives.
In particular, the winner of Ranked Pairs (Covering, wv) goes like this: 1. Lock the covering relation. 2. Continue locking in defeats as in ordinary RP(wv). Note that step one cannot introduce a cycle, because the covering relation is a partial order. ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
