The brief option — with and without

One line: brief: true strips the repetitive [STAR Voting: …] prefix from every section header, because the method is already named in the top banner. It changes only the display — every number is identical.

→ Up: LH reporting options · How the LH engine reports · hub: STAR Reporting

The same election, both ways

A tiny 3-voter STAR election (Bo wins either way). The only difference is the section headers.

brief: false — verbose (every header repeats the method)

--- STAR Voting Method (single winner) ---
[STAR Voting]
 Tabulating 3 ballots.
Ada,Bo,Cy
  5, 3, 0
  4, 5, 1
  0, 2, 5
[STAR Voting: Scoring Round]
 The two highest-scoring candidates advance to the next round.
   Bo            -- 10 -- First place
   Ada           --  9 -- Second place
   Cy            --  6
 Bo and Ada advance.
[STAR Voting: Automatic Runoff Round]
 The candidate preferred in the most head-to-head matchups wins.
   Bo            -- 2 -- First place
   Ada           -- 1
   Equal Support -- 0
 Bo wins.
[STAR Voting: Winner — STAR Voting Method (single winner)]
 Bo

brief: true — compact (the house default)

--- STAR Voting Method (single winner) ---
 Tabulating 3 ballots.
Ada,Bo,Cy
  5, 3, 0
  4, 5, 1
  0, 2, 5
Scoring Round
 The two highest-scoring candidates advance to the next round.
   Bo            -- 10 -- First place
   Ada           --  9 -- Second place
   Cy            --  6
 Bo and Ada advance.
Automatic Runoff Round
 The candidate preferred in the most head-to-head matchups wins.
   Bo            -- 2 -- First place
   Ada           -- 1
   Equal Support -- 0
 Bo wins.
Winner — STAR Voting Method (single winner)
 Bo

(Both renders are trimmed to the sections brief touches. A real default run also prints the finalists matrix and the runoff summary around these — those belong to other options and would drown the header comparison this page is about.)

Exactly what brief does to each header

brief: false	brief: true
[STAR Voting] (a bare repeat of the banner)	dropped
[STAR Voting: Scoring Round]	Scoring Round
[STAR Voting: Automatic Runoff Round]	Automatic Runoff Round
[STAR Voting: Winner — …]	Winner — …

The [STAR Voting: prefix is noise once you know the method — so brief removes the brackets and the prefix and suppresses the bare [STAR Voting] line. The rounds, scores, ballots, and winner are untouched.

Which to use

• brief: true is the engine's built-in default (the house style — "less is more"). It reads cleaner, especially when several elections scroll past.
• brief: false is occasionally handy when you want the section markers to be unmistakable machine-parseable [...] tags, or when teaching what the raw sections are called.
• The _tabulated.txt mirror ignores brief entirely and always renders full detail — so the saved audit copy never depends on this flag.