silly_two_cand_STAR — deliberately-trivial two-candidate cases (parked)¶
These are two-candidate STAR elections. They live here, off the learning path, on purpose.
Why they're parked¶
With only two candidates, STAR has nothing distinctive to show a newcomer:
- Both candidates are always the two finalists (there's no one else to leave out), so the Scoring Round never has to choose — the interesting half of STAR is a no-op.
- The Automatic Runoff just asks "which of the two did you score higher?" — which is exactly what an ordinary one-mark ballot already asks. So STAR agrees with plain majority voting here by construction.
In other words, a two-candidate STAR example teaches the mechanics of the count but hides the whole reason STAR exists: reading a full ballot across three or more candidates so the broad compromise can surface and vote-splitting can't bury it. Leading a first-time learner with one of these is actively misleading — it makes STAR look like a fancy way to do something they already know.
That's why the STAR — start here page and the teaching progression now open on the three-candidate team-lunch example instead.
Why they're kept¶
- Engine test fixtures. They're small, exact, and still run in the single-winner STAR test suite (they sit under
01_STAR/, so they're discovered automatically) — useful for pinning down runoff-denominator and Equal-Support edge behavior at the smallest possible scale. - Completeness. One of them (
01a_c2_b2) is a real, live BetterVoting election; the set documents the "smallest possible STAR election," "add a second ballot," "a 5-and-0 ballot," and "Equal Support" at N = 2.
The files¶
| Page | What it isolates |
|---|---|
01a_c2_b1_two-candidates |
The smallest possible STAR election — one voter, two flavors. |
01a_c2_b2_two-candidates |
The same, with a second ballot. (Live on BetterVoting: my82v6.) |
01b_c2_b2_two-candidates |
A 5-and-0 ballot added. |
01c_c2_b3_two-candidates |
Equal Support ("I like both flavors") at its smallest. |
Equal Support and the runoff denominator are taught properly — with a real field of candidates — back in the teaching progression (equal_support_runoff_demo) and the pet election.
Up: 01_STAR — single-winner STAR Voting · Concept docs: STAR — start here