Course: Introduction to Political Science (POLS 1) · Silver Oak University (fictional sample) · Prof. Halloran
Module: Week 11 of 16 · Fall 2026 · in-person, two 75-minute sessions
Objectives covered: Objective 6 — explain American government and political participation, including parties, elections, and voting systems and their effects.

This file holds two pieces: (A) the Module 11 Overview page ("Start Here") and (B) the Welcome Announcement that drips out when the module opens. Week 11 runs Mon Nov 9 – Sun Nov 15, with lectures Tue Nov 10 and Thu Nov 12 — note that Wed Nov 11 is Veterans Day, a campus holiday (no class that day; it doesn't affect our Tue/Thu pattern this week, but mark your calendar). All graded work is due Sunday Nov 15, 11:59 p.m. (initial discussion post Fri Nov 13). Adjust the day-of-week and times to match your section.

(A) Module 11 Overview — Start Here

Welcome to Week 11: Political Participation — Parties, Elections & Voting Systems

This is your home base for the week. Read it first, then work the checklist below from top to bottom. Everything you need is linked inside the module.

This week we open the course's first quantitative pocket — the first week where real numbers carry real weight. We ask why political parties exist, walk through the four major electoral system families (plurality/FPTP, majority-runoff, proportional representation, and mixed/MMP), meet Duverger's law as a documented tendency (not an iron law), and learn to allocate seats by hand using the D'Hondt method. Then we put all of it to work on one real, fully documented case: the United Kingdom's July 2024 general election, where a party won a governing majority of seats on barely a third of the national vote. You'll read that result the way a political scientist does — as a plain mechanical fact about the electoral system, with any verdict on whether the outcome is good kept carefully separate from what happened.

The week's big question

"How do different electoral systems turn votes into seats — and what tradeoffs come with each?"

By Friday you'll be able to name and distinguish the four major electoral-system families, explain Duverger's law and its real exceptions, allocate seats yourself using the D'Hondt method, and read a real election result for what it documents versus what it does — and doesn't — settle.

By the end of this week, you can…

Use this as a checklist. If you can do all five out loud, you're ready for the quiz.

• [ ] Explain why political parties exist — aggregation, mobilization, and accountability — and distinguish two-party, multiparty, and dominant-party systems.
• [ ] Distinguish the four electoral-system families — plurality/FPTP, majority-runoff, proportional representation, and mixed (MMP) — by their defining mechanism, not just their name.
• [ ] State Duverger's law as a tendency, not a law of physics — plurality systems tend toward two-party competition, PR tends toward multipartism — and name at least one real exception.
• [ ] Allocate seats using the D'Hondt method on a small worked example, by hand or with a calculator.
• [ ] Read the UK's 2024 general election result for what it documents (a mechanical fact about FPTP) versus what it does not settle (whether that outcome is good policy).

What's due this week, and when

Work these in order — each one gets you ready for the next.

Heads-up on the AI tools: you'll use a chatbot to draft and explain, and then you judge its work against the record. Chatbots routinely invent election statistics, mislabel electoral systems, and slide from a documented fact into a confident verdict. Catching that is the point — in the tutorial, the assignment, and the workshop.

Late policy reminder: 10% off per day late. If life happens, reach out before the deadline — I'd much rather hear from you early.

How to succeed this week

• Lead with the mechanism, not the vibes. Every electoral system is a precise rule for turning votes into seats. Before you judge a system as "fair" or "unfair," be able to state exactly how it counts.
• Memorize one tiny hook. "Seat share ≠ vote share — unless the system is built to make them equal." That single line explains the UK's whole 2024 result.
• Do the D'Hondt table by hand once. It looks intimidating on the page; it takes about five minutes once you've done it a single time.
• Treat the chatbot as a confident intern, not an oracle. It will hand you an election statistic that sounds exactly right and is subtly wrong — this week you'll check every number it gives you against the House of Commons Library's own briefing.
• Expect fairness, practice fairness. The UK's 2024 result — 63.2% of seats on 33.7% of the vote — is reported as documented fact, because it is. Whether that outcome is a problem is a genuinely contested normative question, and this course gives you the strongest case for FPTP and the strongest case for PR, never a verdict.

You don't need any background for this week beyond Week 1's empirical-vs-normative distinction — just a willingness to work one real table of numbers by hand. Come to class ready to explain how the same 100,000 votes could hand out ten seats two completely different ways depending only on the system counting them. See you Tuesday.

(B) Welcome Announcement — Module 11

Release setting: post on the module's start day (offset = 0 days), i.e., Mon Nov 9, 2026 — not before. If your platform won't preserve the scheduled date on import, post this as a draft labeled "Release: Mon Nov 9."

Subject: Week 11 — 33.7% of the vote, 63.2% of the seats. How? 🗳️

Hi everyone, and welcome to Week 11!

Quick puzzle before we start: in the UK's 2024 general election, one party won 33.7% of the national vote — and 63.2% of the seats in Parliament. That's not a typo, and it's not a scandal. It's the predictable, documented output of the electoral system Britain uses, called first past the post. This week you learn exactly why that gap opens up — and you'll see that a completely different electoral system, applied to the exact same votes, would have produced a completely different result.

This week — Political Participation: Parties, Elections & Voting Systems — we tackle the big question: How do different electoral systems turn votes into seats, and what tradeoffs come with each? By Friday you'll know why political parties exist, you'll be able to name and distinguish four families of electoral systems (plurality/FPTP, majority-runoff, proportional representation, and mixed/MMP), you'll understand Duverger's law as a real tendency with real exceptions, and you'll have allocated seats yourself using the D'Hondt method — the same math several real countries use.

Three things not to miss:
1. Lecture Tutorial 11 — work through the week's ideas with one approved chatbot (Gemini, Claude, or ChatGPT) and submit the share link. You'll catch the model's mistakes about real election numbers, not just trust it. Due Sun Nov 15.
2. Political Analysis Workshop 11 (the UK's 2024 election), Quiz 11, Discussion 11, and Assignment 11 also close Sun Nov 15 — the workshop is the heart of the course, so start early; it's this week's data-reading exercise.
3. Open the Start Here page first — it lays out everything in order with due dates.
4. Wednesday, Nov 11 is Veterans Day — a campus holiday. No change to our Tuesday/Thursday meeting pattern this week, but no campus offices are open that day.

One promise, right up front: this week reports the UK's actual election result as plain documented fact — because it is, verified against the House of Commons Library's own official briefing. What this course will never do is tell you whether that outcome is good or bad policy — you'll get the strongest case for first-past-the-post and the strongest case for proportional representation, and your grade never depends on which one you find more persuasive.

Bring a calculator mindset (or just your phone) to class on Tuesday — we're doing real arithmetic on real votes.

See you soon,
Prof. Halloran