• Consider a scheduled movie night where 30 people vote on 10 different films to decide what they’ll watch.
• Presume for a moment that all movies can be placed on an axis with comedy at one end and tragedy at the other.
• Assume that each voter’s preference falls somewhere on that axis.
• Lastly, assume that the collective preference is bimodal, with some clustering around an 80/20 comedy/tragedy mix, the others a 20/80 mix.

The election occurs, the results come in and a compromise 50/50 film is declared the winner. Well, by some peculiarity of preferences, this just doesn’t sit well with the comedy-lovers, so come movie night, most of them don’t show up.

Should the votes of those that didn’t even show up count? If we reuse the ballots of those that show up, we’re likely to reach a far more tragedy-heavy winner. Further, if this movie night is held monthly, do we favourably weigh the votes of those that didn’t show up?