Quote Originally Posted by Grey_Wolf_c View Post
OK, I get what you are saying, but I still disagree that just because an atomic component of a vote is discarded, that the compound vote should be discarded. I consider each combination independent from every other. Sure, A lost. But if A+B has a majority, why would that matter? All that tells me is that A was half of a good idea. I'd vote for more salt while not voting for more sodium or more chlorine. A combined vote is sometimes better than the sum of its parts.
Well...if the A+B combination has a majority, then A+B is the winner. If A+B doesn't quite have a majority....then the A and B options are going to be expressed on at least as many ballots as A+B is; unless there is some other majority, neither A or B are going to be the least expressed option (so the A+B votes will endure).

That said, this was an idea to get you out of expanding all the subsets into explicit combinations (and then determining how to order them)...one I haven't done a lot of analysis on to see how/if final results are distorted. There's nothing wrong with going the full expansion route.