election_title: "Condorcet's 1788 rebuttal to Borda — STAR elects the Condorcet winner"
scenario_description: |-
  Condorcet's own counterexample to the Borda count, in the simplified 11-voter
  form modern textbooks use. Three candidates (Condorcet's Peter, Paul and James)
  and four blocs of voters:

      4 : Peter > Paul  > James
      3 : Paul  > James > Peter
      2 : Paul  > Peter > James
      2 : James > Peter > Paul

  Borda had argued (1770) that his rank-points rule beat plurality because the
  plurality winner can lose a direct majority contest. Condorcet's reply: your rule
  has the same disease. Here BOTH plurality (Paul, 5 first choices) and Borda
  (Paul, 14 points to Peter's 12) elect Paul — yet Peter beats Paul head-to-head
  6-5, and beats James 6-5 as well. Peter is the Condorcet winner, and Paul is not.

  This file runs the profile under STAR. Ranks carry no intensity, so the ranked
  ballots are converted to scores with an even 5 / 3 / 0 spacing; the winner is
  robust to that choice (5/4/0, 5/2/0, 5/1/0 and 4/2/0 all give the same result —
  Paul leads the scoring round, Peter wins the runoff).

  The result is a runoff reversal, and that is the whole lesson. STAR's scoring
  round is a positional count — under a uniform spacing it IS a Borda count — so
  it reproduces Borda's answer and puts Paul first with 37 points. Then the
  automatic runoff runs exactly the direct majority contest Condorcet demanded,
  and Peter wins it 6-5. STAR is Borda's scoring step followed by Condorcet's
  check, and on Condorcet's own counterexample it returns Condorcet's answer.
video_script: |-
  The historical origin of the Condorcet criterion, and a clean way to show what
  STAR's second round is FOR. Borda's pitch was "plurality can elect someone who
  loses a head-to-head." Condorcet's comeback was "so can yours" — and this is the
  election he used. Watch the scoring round elect Borda's winner and the runoff
  overturn it.

  Keep it fair: RCV-IRV also elects Peter here (James is eliminated first and his
  2 ballots transfer to Peter, 6-5). This is not an IRV failure case. The methods
  that miss the Condorcet winner in this election are plurality, Borda, and
  approval — not IRV.

  Names are Condorcet's own (Peter/Paul/James), kept for fidelity to the source
  even though Peter/Paul share an initial, which the house naming rule normally
  avoids.
bv_test_id: BV2250
bv_election_id: khcwm4
bv_results_url: https://bettervoting.com/khcwm4/results
voting_method: STAR
num_winners: 1
ballots: |-
  Count:Peter,Paul,James
  4:5,3,0
  3:0,5,3
  2:3,5,0
  2:3,0,5
expected_winners:
  - Peter

# file: condorcet_1788_star.yaml