Majoritywhen

Majoritywhen is a term used in voting theory to describe a decision rule in which a winner is declared as soon as any option secures a majority of the votes. The rule is most relevant in sequential or real-time counting environments, where ballots or preferences arrive over time rather than being tallied in a single final round. With a fixed electorate of n eligible votes, a majority is floor(n/2) + 1. Under majoritywhen, counting can stop immediately when a candidate reaches that threshold, allowing the outcome to be known before all ballots are tallied.

In practice, majoritywhen is primarily theoretical and is not widely used in formal elections, which typically wait for full tallies or rely on runoff or other secondary rules to determine a winner. It can offer advantages in speed and decisiveness, such as in online polls, quick decision-making committees, or streaming vote interfaces. However, it also introduces potential distortions, including sensitivity to the order in which ballots are received, incentives for strategic voting if voters anticipate early tallies, and challenges for transparency and auditability.

Variants of the concept adjust the threshold or the counting basis. Some formulations require the majority of the total electorate to be exceeded, while others use the majority of currently counted votes, recalibrating as new ballots arrive. While majoritywhen highlights the trade-off between speed and robustness, it remains a coined and largely theoretical rule rather than a standard practice in formal governance.