Paul's Produce Store

Paul, the produce guy, sees the success that Jimmy has had and decides to do his own poll using the same First-Past-The-Fixed-Post system. He gives his customers the same choices with the exception of Starfruit. He knows that there is no interest in Starfruit in his area, while there is a lot of interest in Blueberries. He replaces Starfruit on the ballot with Blueberry. The ballot looks like the one below:

Paul's customers place 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).

Paul's Produce - Initial Count

The first choice votes are counted and the fruits are ranked  highest to lowest by the number of first choice votes that they have recieved.  A total of 23400 votes are cast, so the Fixed-Post is set at 11701.

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

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

Paul's Produce - Step 2: Determine 'Inactive' candidates

* 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:

Grapes 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'.

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

Mango has  14100 possible votes so it remains 'active'. The second choice votes of Blueberry, Banana and Grapes and 'none' will be  tabulated in the second count.

The possible votes for Mango are broken down as follows: