Seat order — the candidate who beats everyone is seated second¶
One line: in this two-seat election Anika beats every other candidate head-to-head — including Dev, who takes seat 1 — and is seated second. Under Bloc STAR "first seated" means won the first runoff, not most preferred, and the difference is visible on the same seven ballots.
▶ Live on BetterVoting: BV2266 vote · results ↗ (election k7pfqt).
→ The method: Bloc STAR · the single-winner version of the same tension: three notions of "winner"
Level: 201 · for debaters One election, 4 candidates, 7 voters, 2 seats — small enough to check the pairwise table by hand.
The election¶
Four candidates — Anika, Bo, Cora, Dev — for two seats, scored 0–5.
| # | Anika | Bo | Cora | Dev |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 4 | 2 | 3 | 2 |
| 2 | 1 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| 3 | 4 | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| 4 | 5 | 4 | 0 | 3 |
| 5 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 3 |
| 6 | 1 | 1 | 4 | 3 |
| 7 | 2 | 5 | 1 | 5 |
Seat 1 — scores Dev 24, Bo 22, Anika 21, Cora 15. The top two advance, so Anika misses the runoff by a single point. Runoff Dev 2 – Bo 1, with 4 voters expressing no preference between them. Dev is seated.
Seat 2 — Dev is removed and the same ballots are re-counted: Bo 22, Anika 21, Cora 15. Runoff Anika 4 – Bo 2 (1 Equal Support). Anika is seated.
Council: Dev, then Anika.
The pairwise table — Anika beats all three¶
| Matchup | For | Against | Equal Support |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anika vs Bo | 4 | 2 | 1 |
| Anika vs Cora | 5 | 2 | 0 |
| Anika vs Dev | 4 | 3 | 0 |
Anika is the Condorcet winner — preferred by a majority to every rival, one at a time — and she is seated after Dev, whom she beats 4–3. No tie is broken anywhere in this election; both seats are decided outright by the ballots.
Why it matters, and why it is not a scandal¶
It matters because seat order is often not cosmetic. Plenty of bodies attach something to finishing first: the chair, the mayoralty, the longer term, the tie-breaking vote, the top line on the ballot next cycle. If your rules say "the top vote-getter becomes chair," this election hands the chair to the candidate a majority likes less than the person seated behind them. That is a rules-design question — the count is doing exactly what it was told — and this is the receipt to have in hand when the question comes up.
It is not a scandal because both of them win. Run these same ballots for one seat and it is an ordinary STAR Condorcet failure: Anika misses the top two by a point and loses outright. The second seat rescues her. Multi-winner elections are more forgiving of a narrow scoring-round miss than single-winner ones — a genuinely good thing to be able to show, and the honest other half of this page.
What the case pins down is the precise claim: Bloc STAR seats winners in the order its runoffs finish, and that order is not a preference ranking. Announce the council as a set, not a podium, unless your rules really mean the podium.
Run it yourself¶
| Case | Voters | Council | Read · run |
|---|---|---|---|
| BV2266 | 7 | Dev (seat 1), Anika (seat 2) | count · yaml · results ↗ |
Live on BetterVoting and reproduced independently in the LH engine; BV and LH agree exactly — Dev then Anika, nTallyVotes 7, tieBreakType: none. The frozen export sits beside the yaml. The head-to-head table is the whole point here, and it lives in the full count — the linked count page and the _tabulated mirror render the full pairwise grid (or run the yaml with --full).
Related¶
- The score leader can win no seat — the sharper form: leading every scoring round and taking nothing
- Participation · the committee spoiler — the folder's other two criteria
- Ties, seat by seat — the other way seat order stops being cosmetic: a seat-1 tie can change who wins seat 2
- Honest limits · Bloc STAR among the at-large methods