Jim's Juicy Fruitstore

Jimmy, the store manager, decides to do a poll to determine what his customers' favorite fruit might be. He decides to use the new First-Past-The-Fixed-Post method of voting.  He gives the customers a choice of 6 fruits and asks them to pick their first choice and their second choice. The ballot looks like the one below:

Jim's customers happily mark an X for their favorite fruit in the "First Choice" column. Then they mark an X for their second favorite fruit in the "Second Choice" column. Finally, they cast their ballot (put it in the box).

Step 1: Initial Count

A total of 16200 ballots  are cast, so the Fixed-Post is set at 8101. The first choice votes are counted and the fruits are ranked highest to lowest by the number of first choice votes that they have received.

No candidate has enough votes to reach the Fixed-Post.

* This would be the final outcome in a FPTP system. Orange would be declared the winner. *

Step 2: Determine who is 'Inactive' on the second count.

* Note: The graphs in this section are not the actual vote count. The hatched areas indicate the 'Potential Second Choice'. It is just an indicator that shows whether a candidate has the potential to reach the fixed post.  The actual redistribution is shown in the next count.

Inactive candidates are determined as follows:

Starfruit does not have enough possible votes to reach the Fixed-Post and is declared inactive.

Banana does not have enough possible votes to reach the Fixed-Post and is declared inactive.

Grapes does not have enough possible votes to reach the Fixed-Post and is declared inactive.

Mango has 8200 possible votes so it remains active. The second choice votes of Grapes, Banana, Starfruit and 'none' will be  tabulated in the second count.

The possible votes for Mango are broken down as follows: