election_title: "Exercise 7 — The vanishing votes that never vanished (a park-tree ballot drill)"

scenario_description: |-
  A park board picks a tree. Nine ballot papers come back: two score the
  finalists equal at the top (5-5), one at 3-3, one bullet-votes Cedar
  (0,0,5), one is all zeros, one is completely blank — and only three
  express a preference between the finalists Aspen and Birch. The drill:
  predict every number in the two-line runoff summary before peeking.
  Scoring round: Aspen 24, Birch 20, Cedar 13. Runoff: Aspen 2, Birch 1,
  Equal Support 6 — "Voters with a preference: 3 of 9 (6 Equal Support)".
  The 9 counts every tabulated ballot: the blank abstention folds into
  Equal Support on this line, and the separate engine Note ("1 of 9
  ballots is marked as an abstention") carries the cast-vs-abstained
  split. No vote vanished: equal scores are counted in full in the
  scoring round and then have no preference to give between equals.
  Exercise: ex07_vanishing_votes.md. Ballots and cast are this repo's own.
voting_method: STAR
num_winners: 1
ballots: |-
  Aspen,Birch,Cedar
  5,5,0 # equal top pair — full weight in scoring, Equal Support in the runoff
  5,5,3 # same, with a nod to Cedar
  3,3,5 # Cedar first — and equal on the two finalists
  5,2,0 # a clear Aspen preference
  4,1,0 # a clear Aspen preference
  2,4,0 # a clear Birch preference
  0,0,5 # bullet vote for Cedar — zero on both finalists is still Equal Support
  0,0,0 # all zeros — a CAST ballot that supports no one
  -,-,- # completely blank — a true abstention, not a cast ballot
expected_winners:
  - Aspen

# file: ex07_vanishing_votes.yaml