Some help required - creating an election simulator

Question

Hey there, i've only been coding java for the past month or so, and I've been going fine apart from this program i'm attempting to code (badly, I admit);
To sum it up:
*The program asks the user how many people are in a country.
*The program asks the user how many electorates there are.
*The program asks the user how many political parties are up for election.
After these inputs, the program does the following; (or in my mind, should)
*Program randomly assigns population to electorates
*Program randomly goes through each electorate asking if a population member will run for a political party. Only 1 person per party in an electorate.
*Program goes to a vote - population in each electorate votes randomly for running candidates.
Usually with some associated output each step.
I'm trying to use inheritance, and supposed to use polymorphism (of which i'm not sure what that is).
Here is what i've got:
public class Main extends InheritedMethods {
     public static void main(String args[]){
//user inputs.
          System.out.println("How many people live in the simulated country overall?:");
          numPeople = readScannerInt();
          System.out.println("the number is: "  +numPeople);+
+          System.out.println("How many electorates are in this country?:");+
+          elecNum = readScannerInt();+
+          System.out.println("the number is: "+  elecNum);
          System.out.println("How many political parties are campaigning?:");
          parties = readScannerInt();
          System.out.println("the number is: "  +parties);+
+          int[] record = electorateAssign();+
+          //This just outputs population data onto the screen so i can confirm it is working properly.+
+          System.out.println("Randomly determing electorate populations...");+
+          for (int z = 0 ; z < elecNum; z++){
               int y=z+1;
               System.out.print("Electorate "+y+": "  +record[z]+  " ");
               if (z % 5 == 4)
                    System.out.println();
          int[] people = peopleStorer(record);
          //print();
          System.out.println();
          System.out.println("Dividing populations political opinions...");
          System.out.println("Commencing Voting...");
          for (int k = 0 ; k < numPeople; k++){
               System.out.print(people[k]  +" ");+
+               if (k % 10 == 9)+
+                    System.out.println();+
+          }+
+     }+
+}+
+import java.util.Random;+
+import java.util.Scanner;+
+public class InheritedMethods {+
+     static int numPeople;+
+     static int elecNum;+
+     static int parties;+
+     static int[] candidates = new int[numPeople];+
+     public static int readScannerInt() {+
+          Scanner userInput = new Scanner(System.in);+
+          String num = userInput.next();+
+          int numReturn = Integer.parseInt(num);+
+          return numReturn;+
+     }+
+     public static int[] peopleStorer(int[] record){+
+          int [] people = new int [numPeople];+
+          int counter=0;+
+          int catcher=0;+
+          while( counter<elecNum){+
+               while (catcher<record[counter]){+
+                    people[catcher++]=counter;
               counter++;
          return people;
     public static int[] electorateAssign(){
          Random dice = new Random();
          int number;
          int[] elecPop=new int[elecNum];
          for(int counter=0; counter <numPeople; counter++){
               number=dice.nextInt(elecNum);
               elecPop[number];
          }I've got the first 4 steps down, the trouble i'm really having is taking my electorates array and doing anything at all with it.
I was messing with multi-dimensional arrays for a while, but i've since concluded these refuse to work in methods for me (i can never seem to return them to the main, so now i've been trying to use 1 dimensional arrays
I've tried a couple of times to make more methods that send my electorates array to a vote method (but admittedly i'm used to python and coding on java is like pulling finger nails for me) but i don't get very far.

Answer 1

Here ya go, this is how to return multidimensional Strings:
public class Junk {
  String[][] s = {{"this is 1,1", "this is 1,2"}, {"this is 2,1", "this is 2,2"}};
  Junk(){
  public String[][] myStuff(){
    return s;
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    Junk junk = new Junk();
    String[][]p = junk.myStuff();
    for(int i=0; i<p.length; i++){
      for(int j=0; j<p.length; j++){
System.out.print(p[i][j]);
System.out.print(" ");
System.out.println();