Bloc STAR — concept pages

Everything explaining Bloc STAR — multi-winner STAR for filling several seats at once with the same 0–5 ballot. It fills N seats by running the whole single-winner count N times: elect a winner, remove them from the field, re-run on the same unchanged ballots. It is the majoritarian multi-winner method — it asks "who does the majority most want?" for every seat — and its proportional cousin is STAR-PR.

New here? Start with Bloc STAR — the ballot, the elect–remove–re-run loop, and how to read the report. Newer than that? Learn single-winner STAR first; Bloc STAR is that method, once per seat.

Not sure you want a majoritarian method at all? That's the bigger decision, and it comes first: Electing more than one, simply.

The method

• Bloc STAR — the count, the removal step, and what it does not do (start here)
• The Bloc STAR ballot — what the paper looks like; filling three seats changes three lines of text and nothing about how you mark it, and BetterVoting's live ballot prints neither the right name nor the sentence that explains multi-winner
• The ballot and the official definitions — the published voter instructions read line by line, and why an unqualified "Multi-Winner STAR Voting" means this method
• The majority sweep — a cohesive majority can take every seat: why it happens, when that's the right answer, and when it means you wanted proportional
• Over 50% — what a landslide actually buys — the sweep's mirror image: a majority that runs one candidate wins one seat, and the next one goes to a candidate most voters scored 0
• The score leader can win no seat — Bloc STAR is not "top N by points"; the runoff decides every seat, so the point leader can be shut out entirely
• Ties in Bloc STAR — the STAR ladder once per seat, plus the wrinkle no top-N method has: a tie at seat 1 can change who wins seat 2
• Bloc STAR among the at-large methods — SNTV, Limited, Block Plurality, Bloc Approval, Bloc Ranked Robin, and why ranked ballots don't buy proportionality
• Honest limits — the four limits it adds to STAR's own, and the three properties it keeps
• At-large elections and the Voting Rights Act — the one place the sweep stops being a design choice and becomes vote dilution, what Section 2 and Gingles actually say, and why a scored ballot doesn't change the analysis

Worked examples — run them yourself

Every claim on these pages has a runnable election behind it. The full case index, with the BetterVoting id / tie type / issue table, is in the folder overview; the ones the concept pages lean on:

• The baseline — the smallest Bloc election that decides anything, counted in full
• BV1835 — the score leader wins no seat — 100 voters, 4 seats; the compromise candidate leads every round and takes nothing
• Exercise 12 — bloc vs. proportional — ten ballots, two seats, counted both ways: 60% takes the board, then earns half of it
• Food-Truck Row — one 100-voter electorate, five counts, three different outcomes
• Lot A / Lot B — identical ballots, one seat-1 coin toss, two different councils
• BV130-r2 — the dead-rung lot tie — every deterministic rung inert, and BetterVoting still reporting tieBreakType: none

Reference

• Glossary: Bloc STAR terms

(Parallel method hubs: STAR Voting · STAR-PR · Approval · Ranked Robin. Curriculum: 201.5. Up: the docs hub 00_START_HERE.)