Jotan takes the Senate seat Ty gave up, on a countback this paper has reproduced from the published ballots — every figure on the Commission’s final sheet, to ten decimal places.

The seat had been Ty’s for less than a day. Ty resigned as Court of Review Judge and as Immigration Judge on Sunday in order to take it, then vacated it on Monday.

How a countback fills a seat

Nobody votes again. The original ballots are re-read with the sitting senators taken out of the field, and the seat goes to whoever the electorate had most support left for — support being the ballot weight that was never spent on anybody else.

The one subtlety is what happens to the weight that bought the vacated seat. It is refunded. The ballots that elected Ty get their voting power back, because the thing they bought has been handed in; the weight spent on the other ten seats stays spent, which is what stops a vacancy quietly re-opening the whole election.

Where the seat went

With the eleven sitting members excluded, the bar walked from 5 down to 1 without anyone making a quota, and the seat fell to residual support:

Jotan finished on 1.5917 against PHon’s 1.3763 — a comfortable margin by the standards of a countback, and both of them from the Revolutionary Organization for Social Equality.

What it does to the chamber

ROSE returns to four seats and the independents drop to two. The Civil Liberties Party’s three are untouched, and with Sirius the bloc that can hold an override is still four of eleven.

The party that lost four candidates in five rounds on election night has gained a seat without a vote being cast.

We checked it

This paper ran the countback itself, from the same ballot file, and got the same answer: Jotan, on the same numbers. Every candidate’s remaining weight matches the Commission’s published output exactly, to ten decimal places.

The countback in full, round by round, and the ballots it was counted from, are published — the check is one a reader can repeat.