A plain-language walkthrough of how seats are filled, how coalitions form,
and what happens to your vote after your candidate wins.
Proportional STAR uses the same STAR ballot as single-winner STAR. What the ballot asks of voters is also the same: rate favorite candidates high, opposition candidates low or not at all, and favorable candidates in between. What is different, and it makes all the difference, is the formula that operates under the hood, a formula named Allocated Score. In multimember districts, Allocated Score is the mathematical engine that delivers seats to candidates in proportion to how voters scored them on the STAR ballot. This article covers the basics of the Allocated Score engine without getting bogged down in the accounting details.
The best way to see how it works is to watch it work. We'll walk through a simplified election — three seats, four candidates, sixty voters — and introduce the key ideas as they come up naturally.
Here is the ballot for our example district. Four candidates are running for three seats. Before reading any further, take a moment to look at the Party Endorsements column. One row is different from the others.
| Candidate | Party Registration | Party Endorsements | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|
| Martinez | Democratic | Democratic | ⓪ ① ② ③ ④ ⑤ |
| Chen | Republican | Republican | ⓪ ① ② ③ ④ ⑤ |
| Olson | Working Families | Working Families, Green | ⓪ ① ② ③ ④ ⑤ |
| Patel | Green | Green | ⓪ ① ② ③ ④ ⑤ |
Olson's row shows two endorsements — Working Families and Green — even though Olson is registered with only one of those parties. That second endorsement is a signal. It tells Green voters: our party believes this candidate represents our interests. It is visible on the ballot before anyone votes, so voters can factor it into their scores. This is what a coalition looks like at the ballot box.
Patel, Green's own candidate, shows only one endorsement — Green. No other party endorsed Patel. We'll see why that asymmetry matters when the seats start filling.
Sixty ballots are cast. The voters sort themselves — not by registration, but by how they scored. Here are the four groups and their sizes:
Three seats, sixty voters. The price of a seat — called the quota — is total ballots divided by the number of seats: 60 ÷ 3 = 20. Every seat costs the same. This price is never checked before a seat is awarded — it only matters afterward, when the cost is processed.
Every voter starts the count at full influence. Think of it like the fuel gauge in your car: full at the top, empty at the bottom. When your candidate is selected and the cost is processed, your gauge drops — you spent some of your influence on representation you received. The gauge tracks what you have left to spend on the seats still to come.
Each round, the Allocated Score formula does two things — and keeping them separate is the key to understanding everything that follows. Think of it as two windows at a service counter, each handling a different job:
The person at the first window never touches the price. The person at the second window never decides who won. Selection and accounting are two different operations, and they happen in that order — every round, without exception.
The count sums the support behind each candidate. Democratic voters — the largest group at 24 — all gave Martinez their highest score. No other candidate comes close. Martinez is selected and awarded the first seat.
Now the cost is processed. The price of a seat is 20, and 24 voters backed Martinez. More than enough. The beaker — the accounting tool — fills with Democratic support past the quota line, so the cost is covered entirely within this one group. All 24 voters share the charge equally: each one's gauge drops by the same amount.
Because there were more voters than the price required, nobody is fully spent. Each Democratic voter gets change — a small fraction of their influence carries forward. Their gauge drops from 1.00 to about 0.17. Reduced, but not empty.
Working Families' 13 voters all gave Olson five stars. Green's 8 voters — honoring their party's endorsement — gave Olson four stars. Together, that is 21 voters' worth of full-weight support behind Olson. Republican's Chen has 15 voters at full weight. 21 is more than 15. Olson is selected and awarded the second seat.
Now the accounting shows something new. The beaker fills from the bottom, heaviest tokens first. Working Families' five-star support settles in — 13 voters. But 13 falls short of the price of 20. The quota line is still above them. Their entire contribution is consumed. Working Families voters are fully allocated — their gauges drop to 0.00. They got their representative.
The remaining cost — 7 more units — falls to the Green tier above. Green's 8 voters gave four stars, so they sit in the next tier up. This is the cusp: the tier where the line cuts through. Seven of the eight voters' worth of support is needed, so all 8 Green voters share that cost equally. Their gauges drop to about 0.13. Reduced, but not empty — they still have a small amount of influence for the final round.
Republican voters have been at full weight this entire time — they haven't backed any winner yet. Their 15 voters' worth of untouched support is the largest pool of remaining influence. Chen is selected and awarded the final seat.
Two seats have already been paid for at 20 each — that is 40 of the original 60 units of weight consumed. Exactly 20 remain in the district: one quota. Whoever is selected for the last seat is sitting on exactly one quota of remaining influence. The last seat fills itself — there is no way to fall short, because the leftover weight is the price.
1 Democratic · 1 Working Families + Green · 1 Republican. The three seats reflect the distribution of voter support across the district. Every gauge started full and ended empty — every voter's influence was spent, and every seat was paid for at the same price.
Look back at what just happened and notice what the Allocated Score formula never asked about. It never asked which party a voter belonged to. It never asked about race, language, geography, or income. It never drew a line on a map. It never assigned seats to parties in advance.
The formula did one thing, three times: it counted the support behind each candidate, selected the one with the most, and processed the cost. The groups that formed around each winner were not declared or registered — they emerged from the scores on the ballots. Democratic voters became a "group" because they scored Martinez the same way. Working Families and Green voters became a coalition because they scored Olson the same way. Republican voters became a group because they scored Chen the same way.
The proportionality of the outcome — one seat per twenty voters, three groups each large enough to cover the price — was not determined by a thumb on the scale or a backroom deal. It was a consequence of the arithmetic. Equal price, equal treatment, repeated until every seat is filled. That's how Proportional STAR counts every vote and makes every vote count.