Plurality block voting — a 44% minority sweeps all three seats¶

Generated from mmp_minority_sweep.yaml — do not edit by hand. Regenerate: python STARVote_LH_tabulation_engine/tools_adam/scripts/build_yaml_pages.py.

Method: plurality · 3 seats · Expected winners: Alma, Bram, Cleo

Official tie-break (lot) order: Alma > Bram > Cleo > Dev > Enzo > Finn > Gus > Hugo > Iris — consulted only if every deterministic tiebreaker stays tied (how the ladder works).

Scenario¶

The second electorate in this set (LH-only — see the folder README). Where mmp_block_voting.yaml shows a 60% MAJORITY sweeping, this one shows the harder version of the same defect: a faction that most voters voted against still takes every seat.

9 voters, 3 seats, 9 candidates. Party Oak (Alma, Bram, Cleo) has 4 voters; Party Pine (Dev, Enzo, Finn) has 3; two voters prefer the independents (Gus, Hugo, Iris) and spend all three of their marks there. Block voting gives each voter as many marks as there are seats, and every bloc votes its own slate, so each candidate simply collects their own bloc: Oak 4, Pine 3, independents 2.

Oak sweeps 3-0 on 4 of 9 voters — 44%. The other 56% of the electorate elects nobody, because it is split across two groups and neither one out-polls Oak on its own. That is the whole mechanism: block voting rewards the largest bloc, not the largest agreement, and the opposition's size is irrelevant unless it concentrates.

This is also ROUND 1 of the two-round method — see mmp_majority_block_runoff.yaml, where the same 9 voters reverse this result once the independents are dropped. Uncapping the marks reverses it too: mmp_block_approval.yaml.

Shrunk from the 10,000-voter, 12-candidate table in Wikipedia's "Block voting" article. Only the ORDER of the totals carries the lesson, so the electorate rescales to the smallest integers that keep every inequality strict.

Ballots¶

Row 1 = candidate names; each later row is one voter's 0–5 scores (a N × prefix = N identical ballots).

Alma,Bram,Cleo,Dev,Enzo,Finn,Gus,Hugo,Iris
1,1,1,0,0,0,0,0,0   # Oak voter — the full Oak slate
1,1,1,0,0,0,0,0,0   # Oak voter
1,1,1,0,0,0,0,0,0   # Oak voter
1,1,1,0,0,0,0,0,0   # Oak voter
0,0,0,1,1,1,0,0,0   # Pine voter — the full Pine slate
0,0,0,1,1,1,0,0,0   # Pine voter
0,0,0,1,1,1,0,0,0   # Pine voter
0,0,0,0,0,0,1,1,1   # independent voter — all three marks on the independents
0,0,0,0,0,0,1,1,1   # independent voter

What the engine says¶

Full report from the _tabulated mirror (regenerated on every run; every analysis forced on):

--- Block Voting (plurality-at-large) — 3 winners ---
 Tabulating 9 ballots (3 votes/voter).

Votes (most votes fill the seats):
   Alma     4  <- Elected
   Bram     4  <- Elected
   Cleo     4  <- Elected
   Dev      3
   Enzo     3
   Finn     3
   Gus      2
   Hugo     2
   Iris     2

Winners — Block Voting (plurality-at-large), 3 seats:
   1. Alma   (4 votes)
   2. Bram   (4 votes)
   3. Cleo   (4 votes)

Run it yourself:

python STARVote_LH_tabulation_engine/starvote_larry_hastings.py method_comparisons/multi_member_plurality/cases/mmp_minority_sweep.yaml

Plurality block voting — a 44% minority sweeps all three seats¶

Scenario¶

Ballots¶

What the engine says¶

See also¶