@sarawolk yes more or less a thought experiment, trying to address some dissonance between the possibility of a Condorcet winner having low support and a support (approval) winner being different from the Condorcet winner even when one exists.
In this case, I mean that a candidate is either supported or not supported by a voter according to the support cutoff of their ballot. I’m using the word “support” rather than “approval,” because I don’t think approval is an appropriate word philosophically (or mathematically). The positive emotional connotation of “approve” is all that bothers me. “Support” seems more emotionally neutral and has a mathematical meaning that aligns well with what is happening in the system, for example, “the support of a distribution.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Support_(mathematics)
The quantity of support of a candidate is simply the number of voters who formally support that candidate on their ballot.
Here is another attempt at a modification. In sequence, if there is a Condorcet loser, they are eliminated. If there is no Condorcet loser, a candidate with the least quantity of support is eliminated, with ties broken by rank runoff if possible. Repeat until one candidate remains.