Htykuut

I'm a beginner trying to learn java and arrays are proving to be difficult. Please bear with me, I don't know all of the correct terminology and I'm not great at explaining things.

I'm trying to write a program that will calculate votes per candidate. Those votes are entered by the user. Example: Candidate one's total votes should be 814. The total votes for candidate two should be 773.

What I'm having trouble with is finding the sum of each candidate's votes, and having them print separately. My code just adds the 814 and 773 for a total of 1,587.

     for(i = 0; i < precincts.length; i++)

  {

    System.out.println("How many votes were recieved in this precinct?");

    numVotes[i] =scnr.nextInt();

  }

  for(int vote : numVotes) //Enhanced loop to copy array numVotes to vote 

  {

    totalVotes = totalVotes + vote; //the sum of elements in numvotes to find total votes of both candidates

  }

I hope that what I'm asking makes sense to someone. Regardless, thank you in advance for your help!

You don't need two arrays to accomplish this task. You can what is needed with just the array of precincts. It's all a matter of how you ask the User for input and what you do with that input.

You have your precinct array and you are already utilizing it within a for loop. Everything that needs to be acquired can be done through this loop, for example:

String precincts = {"Precinct A", "Precinct B", "Precinct C", "Precinct D"};

int candidate1VoteSum = 0;

int candidate2VoteSum = 0;



for (int i = 0; i < precincts.length; i++) {

    System.out.println("nHow many votes were received in: " + precincts[i] + "?");

    System.out.print("For Candidate 1: ");

    candidate1VoteSum += scnr.nextInt();



    System.out.print("For Candidate 2: ");

    candidate2VoteSum += scnr.nextInt();

}

Here we merely used two int variables (candidate1VoteSum and candidate2VoteSum)to hold the sum of votes for each candidate. The total votes for each candidate in each precinct is all that is needed. As we iterate through the Precincts we simply ask the User to supply the total votes for each Candidate for that current Precinct.

When the for loop is finished you now have all the necessary data to display to display the voting results, for example:

System.out.println("nCandidate 1 recieved a total of " + 

        candidate1VoteSum + " votes from all Precincts.");

System.out.println("Candidate 2 recieved a total of " + 

        candidate2VoteSum + " votes from all Precincts.");



System.out.println("nThe winning Candidate is: " + 

        // Nested Ternary Operators are used here.

        (candidate1VoteSum == candidate2VoteSum ? "It's A Tie!" : 

        (candidate1VoteSum > candidate2VoteSum ? "Candidate 1" : "Candidate 2"))

);

Here is information on using a Ternary Operator:

If you actually need the total from each Precinct to go into a candidate Array then you can add to the array directly from within the for loop as well but first you will need to declare the integer arrays first and size them to be the same size as the precincts array since each element is only holding the total votes from each Precinct, for example:

String precincts = {"Precinct A", "Precinct B", "Precinct C", "Precinct D"};

int candidate_1_Votes = new int[precincts.length];

int candidate_2_Votes = new int[precincts.length];

int candidate1VoteSum = 0;

int candidate2VoteSum = 0;



// Getting User input with regards to voting results...

for (int i = 0; i < precincts.length; i++) {

    System.out.println("nHow many votes were received in: " + precincts[i] + "?");

    System.out.print("For Candidate 1: ");

    candidate_1_Votes[i] = scnr.nextInt();

    candidate1VoteSum += candidate_1_Votes[i];



    System.out.print("For Candidate 2: ");

    candidate_2_Votes[i] = scnr.nextInt();

    candidate2VoteSum += candidate_2_Votes[i];

}

Now that you have your candidate int arrays (candidate_1_Votes and candidate_2_Votes) you can determine which Precinct gave what total votes to whatever Candidate, for example:

for (int i = 0; i < precincts.length; i++) {

    System.out.println("n" + precincts[i] + " gave Candidate 1 a total of " +

                candidate_1_Votes[i] + " votes.");

    System.out.println(precincts[i] + " gave Candidate 2 a total of " +

                candidate_2_Votes[i] + " votes.");

}