A club for voters who are tired of wasted votes

Stop splitting the vote. Start deciding elections.

Bloc members make one simple deal. Before each election, we rate the candidates together. Then we all vote for the best one who can actually win.

Lots of races are won by a few hundred votes. A few thousand neighbors voting as one can decide them.

Try a practice election · 2 min Get early access

Not tied to any party. Skip any race you like.

The same 140 voters, split three ways. Together they don’t decide anything.

The problem

Why your vote can feel wasted

Most American elections have one rule: whoever gets the most votes wins, even without a majority. That one rule causes a lot of trouble.

Similar candidates split the vote.

When two candidates appeal to the same voters, they divide them. Then the candidate most of those voters like least can win.

Voting your heart can cost you.

Vote for the long shot you love, and you’ve got no say in who actually wins. People call it “throwing your vote away.”

Playing it safe keeps you quiet.

Vote for the “safe” choice instead, and no one ever learns who you really wanted. Good candidates stay long shots forever.

Bloc fixes both problems: you say who you really want, and your vote still lands where it can change the result.

How it works

Three steps. A few minutes per election.

Join as a real voter.

Sign up with the name and address on your voter registration. We check that you’re a registered voter, so every member stands for one real vote.

For the curious

We’ll match members against the public voter file in states that publish one. Your name and address go into one system, and your ratings go into a separate one that only sees a random code. In this early version both are run by the same team. The plan is to hand the counting to an independent organization.
Rate the candidates.

Before each election, we send you the candidates on your ballot. Give each one 0 to 5 stars. Sending your ratings is your promise to vote with the group in that race.

Not feeling it? Skip that race. That’s always fine.
For the curious

Star ratings let you back your true favorite and still say who you could live with. We count them with a method called STAR voting (Score Then Automatic Runoff).
- You can change your ratings until rating closes.
- You can back out of a race while rating is still open.
- Don’t know the candidates? Give them all the same score. You’ll still count toward the group and vote with it.
Vote together.

When rating closes, we announce the pick: the members’ top-rated candidate out of those who can actually win with our votes. Your official ballot arrives after that. Vote for the pick.

For the curious

We decide who “can win with us” before anyone rates, using public polls and a cautious guess at how many members will really show up. If the numbers are too close to call, or our votes wouldn’t change anything, we make no pick. See the full method.

See it work

One race in Harbor, from start to finish

Harbor is a made-up city. The count below, though, is real: practice ballots, counted by Bloc’s actual software.

Step 1

Members loved Maya Chen.

Chen, an independent, got the highest ratings. If everyone could vote their heart, she’d be the choice.

Step 2

But Chen couldn’t win.

Polls had her at 18%. Even with every Bloc vote behind her, she’d still finish third. Those votes would decide nothing.

Step 3

So we backed Priya Shah.

Shah was members’ favorite out of the two who could win. She won by about 240 votes. Bloc had planned on delivering around 1,400.

Loading the count…

How many of us does it take?

Fewer neighbors than you’d think.

A bloc doesn’t need a majority. It only needs more votes than the usual gap between first and second place. Pick a race size and see how many members it takes.

Your favorite still gets heard

We always publish who members truly wanted.

Even when we can’t elect our favorite, we tell the world who it was. Every race, people see how much support that “long shot” really has. That’s how long shots stop being long shots.

Members’ favorite

Maya Chen

Couldn’t win this time

Bloc’s pick

Priya Shah

Best who could win

Election result

Shah wins

By about 240 votes

The deal

One promise, and you’re in charge of when you make it.

Joining doesn’t commit you to anything. Rating a race does. The promise only works if members keep it, and that’s exactly what gives the group its power.

When you rate a race, you promise to:

Vote for Bloc’s pick in that race. That’s the whole promise.

You’re always free to:

Skip any race. Skipped races don’t bind you to anything.
Change your ratings until rating closes.
Back out of a race you rated, as long as rating is still open.
Rate everyone equally if you have no favorite.

“By sending these ratings, I promise to vote for Bloc’s pick in this race.”

This sentence is printed on every Bloc ballot.

Trust

Built so you don’t have to take our word for it

Your real ballot stays secret.

We never see how you vote in the actual election. Nobody does. We only measure, after the fact, how many members turned out overall.

Anyone can recount.

Every member’s ratings are published, with no names, under a confirmation code. Find your code, check your ratings, and recount the whole race yourself.

“Who can win” is locked in first.

We publish which candidates can win with our votes before anyone rates. That list can get shorter later. It can never grow to fit the results.

No pick beats a bad pick.

If the polls are too close to call, too few members take part, or our votes wouldn’t change anything, we say so and make no pick.

Your name is kept apart from your ratings.

Who you are and how you rated live in two separate systems, linked only by a random code. One holds your name, the other holds your stars.

Questions

Good questions, straight answers

Isn’t this just “voting for the lesser evil”?

No, and here’s the difference. You say who you really want first, and we publish it. The pick comes from members’ own ratings, not from a party or a donor. And when your favorite can win, the pick is your favorite.

What if I don’t like the pick?

The pick is built from members’ ratings, yours included. If you feel strongly about a race, you can skip it, or back out while rating is still open. Once rating closes, keeping your promise is what makes the group strong enough to matter next time.

Is Bloc part of a political party?

No. Bloc backs whoever members rate highest among the candidates who can actually win. That might be a different party every race.

Is it legal to agree to vote together?

Groups of voters agreeing to back the same candidate is ordinary political organizing. Unions, clubs, and party slates do it all the time. What the law forbids is paying or rewarding someone for their vote. Bloc never does that, and it never sees your real ballot.

How do you know who can win?

We take a recent public poll, add a cautious estimate of how many members will really vote, and check whether our votes would put each candidate in first place, allowing for poll error. Only candidates who come out ahead most of the time make the list. Read the details.

Which elections does Bloc cover?

Bloc is built for races where a group of a few thousand can make the difference: city councils, school boards, county offices, and primaries. Those races often have low turnout and small margins.

Is Harbor a real place?

No. Harbor and its candidates are made up, and so is its poll. The ratings were cast and counted by Bloc’s software, so you can see exactly how a real count would work.

Want all the math? Read the fine print: exactly how we count, decide who can win, and protect your privacy.

Get early access

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Bloc isn’t running real races yet. Leave your email and we’ll let you know when it reaches you.

Or try a practice election right now. It takes about two minutes.