The general ticket, also known as party block voting (PBV) or ticket voting,[1] is a type of block voting in which voters opt for a party, or a team's set list of candidates, and the highest-polling party/team becomes the winner. Unless specifically altered, this electoral system (at-large voting) results in the victorious political party receiving 100% of the seats. Rarely used today, the general ticket is usually applied in more than one multi-member district, which theoretically allows regionally strong minority parties to win some seats, but the strongest party nationally still typically wins with a landslide.

This system is largely seen as outdated and undemocratic due to its extreme majoritarian results, and has mostly been replaced by party-list proportional (allowing fair representation to all parties) or first-past-the-post voting (allowing voters to vote for individual candidates in single-member districts). Similarly to first-past-the post and other non-proportional district based methods it is highly vulnerable to gerrymandering and majority reversal (when the party getting the most votes does not win the most seats). An example for the latter is the US Electoral College, the members of which are (overwhelmingly) elected using the general ticket.

In modern party-list systems, a full or partial return by the party-list proportional system is common. The partial return is referred to as a majority bonus or majority jackpot system, such modern systems award winners among more than the highest-polling party, if a low vote threshold is reached by a minority party, and often are counterweighted to do justice to the overall votes cast for smaller parties. This is used in France and Italy for a third and fifth of their regional councillors respectively, generally who then serve the region at-large.

Usage

At the national level it was used for as many as seven of the states, for any given regularly convened US Congress, in the US House of Representatives before 1967 but mainly before 1847; and in France, in the pre-World War I decades of the Third Republic which began in 1870. It is in use in the Parliament of Singapore as to its dominant type of constituencies, those being multi-member, however moderated by the inclusion of at least one person of a different race than the others in any "team" (which is not necessarily a party team) which is selected by voters.

Fully majoritarian systems

Countries using only party block voting or party block voting (in multi-member districts) mixed with a single-winner methods in single-member districts.

Country Legislative body Latest election (year) (Seats per

constituency)

 Electoral system Total seats Constituencies Governmental system Notes
Brazil Brazil Federal Senate 2022 3 First-past-the-post (FPTP/SMP) and party block voting (PBV) alternating every 4 years 81 States and Federal District Presidential republic
Ivory Coast Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast) National Assembly 2021 First-past-the-post (FPTP/SMP) in single-member districts and party block voting (PBV) in multi-member districts 255 electoral districts Presidential system
Egypt Egypt House of Representatives 2020 1 (local districts), 42-100 (list districts) Two-round system (TRS) and party block voting (PBV/General ticket) 59 electoral districts Semi-presidential system
Singapore Singapore Parliament 2020 First-past-the-post (FPTP/SMP) and party block voting (PBV) 104 (93 directly elected)
United States United States United States Electoral College 2020 1-54 The electors of the Electoral College (who have opportunity to elect the President of the United States) are elected by General ticket in 48 states based on state-wide party vote tallies.

Nebraska and Maine use the general ticket method for 2 statewide electors each, with the other electors chosen based on the plurality of presidential vote tallies, one per congressional district.

 538 states and Washington D.C (except Maine and Nebraska, where the congressional districts also work as constituencies) Presidential system Alaska used FPTP in the 2020 election, IRV/IRV will be used first in the next (2024) presidential election.

Mixed systems

Countries using party block voting as part of a mixed system (combined with proportional representation)

Country Legislative body Latest election (year) (Seats per

constituency)

 Electoral system Total seats Share of seats elected by PBV Constituencies Governmental system Notes
Andorra Andorra General Council 2019 2 (local districts) / 14 (nationwide constituency) Parallel voting / superposition (MMM):

Party block voting (PBV) locally + list PR nationwide

 28 50% 7 parishes,

1 nationwide constituency

 Parliamentary system
Cameroon Cameroon National Assembly 2020 1-7 Coexistence+conditional supermixed/hybrid:

First-past-the-post (FPTP/SMP) in single-member constituencies,

party with over 50% of vote gets all seats in multi-member constituencies (party block voting), otherwise highest party gets half, rest distributed by largest remainder (Hare quota)

 180 (50%/100%) electoral districts
Chad Chad National Assembly 2011 ? Coexistence+conditional supermixed/hybrid:

First-past-the-post (FPTP/SMP) party with over 50% of vote gets all seats in multi-member constituencies (party block voting), otherwise List PR (largest remainder, closed list)[2]

 188 (50%/100%) electoral districts
Djibouti Djibouti National Assembly 2018 3-28 Fusion / majority jackpot (MBS):

80% of seats (rounded to the nearest integer) in each constituency are awarded to the party receiving the most votes (party block voting), remaining seats are allocated proportionally to other parties receiving over 10% (closed list, D'Hondt method)

 65 80% regions Presidential system
Greece Greece Hellenic Parliament 2019 Majority bonus system (MBS) ? ?
San Marino San Marino Grand and General Council 2019 Majority bonus system (MBS) ? ?

France

The scrutin de liste (Fr. scrutin, voting by ballot, and liste, a list) was, before World War I, a system of election of national representatives in France by which the electors of a department voted for a party-homogeneous slate of deputies to be elected to serve it nationally. It was distinguished from the scrutin d'arrondissement, also called scrutin uninominal, under which the electors in each arrondissement returned one deputy.[3] It has been abolished since, as to the French Parliament.

It is used on two-round basis to elect 1⁄3 of the regional councillors, and favours the largest party of that council's election.

Italy

In Italy, this system applies to 1⁄5 of the regional councillors since 1995. As in the French version, its goal is to ensure that the assembly is controlled by the leading coalition of parties. There is one round of voting.

Singapore

In Singapore, the general ticket system, locally known as the party block vote, elects by far most members of the Parliament of Singapore from multi-member districts known as group representation constituencies (GRCs), on a plurality basis. This operates in parallel to elections from single-member district and nominations. It is moderated by the inclusion of at least one person of a different race than the others in any "team" (which is not necessarily a party team) which is selected by voters.

United States

For an at-large one-party return, many states adopted a general ticket. The state voted for and returned an at-large delegation to the House of Representatives.

Ticket voting is used to elect Electoral College for presidential elections, except for EC members in Maine and Nebraska, and Alaska (starting in 2024), where most of the EC members are elected by first-past-the-post in congressional districts.

Under ticket voting, votes for any non-overall winning party's candidates do not receive any representation by elected members.

In terms of paper practices, the systems used varied between issue of:

  • a single ballot, listing all candidates and party affiliations (by means of bloc voting)
  • separate ballots for each seat

This was quite common until reserved to special use by the 1842 Apportionment Bill and locally implementing legislation which took effect after the 1845–47 Congress.[4] Until the Congress ending in 1967 it took effect in rare instances, save for a two cases of ex-Confederate States – for one term – these had tiny delegations, were for top-up members to be at-large allocated pending redistricting, or were added to the union since the last census.

The following is a table of every instance of the use of the general ticket in the United States Congress.

Congress Dates State and
number of representatives
1st1789–1791Connecticut (5), New Jersey (4), New Hampshire (3), Pennsylvania (8)
2nd1791–1793Connecticut (5), New Jersey (4), New Hampshire (3)
3rd1793–1795Connecticut (7), Georgia (2), New Jersey (5), New Hampshire (4), Pennsylvania (13), Rhode Island (2)
4th and 5th1795–1799Connecticut (7), Georgia (2), New Jersey (5), New Hampshire (4), Rhode Island (2)
6th1799–1801Connecticut (7), Georgia (2), New Hampshire (4), Rhode Island (2)
7th1801–1803Connecticut (7), Georgia (2), New Jersey (5), New Hampshire (4), Rhode Island (2)
8th1803–1805Connecticut (7), Georgia (4), New Jersey (6), New Hampshire (5), Rhode Island (2), Tennessee (3)
9th to 12th1805–1813Connecticut (7), Georgia (4), New Jersey (6), New Jersey (5), Rhode Island (2)
13th1813–1815Connecticut (7), Delaware (2), Georgia (6), New Hampshire (6), Rhode Island (2), Vermont (6)
14th to 16th1815–1821Connecticut (7), Delaware (2), Georgia (6), New Jersey (6), New Hampshire (6), Rhode Island (2), Vermont (6)
17th1821–1823Connecticut (7), Delaware (2), Georgia (6), New Jersey (6), New Hampshire (6), Rhode Island (2)
18th1823–1825Connecticut (6), Georgia (7), New Jersey (6), New Hampshire (6), Rhode Island (2), Vermont (5)
19th1825–1827Connecticut (6), Georgia (7), New Jersey (6), New Hampshire (6), Rhode Island (2)
20th1827–1829Connecticut (6), New Jersey (6), New Hampshire (6), Rhode Island (2)
21st and 22nd1829–1833Connecticut (6), Georgia (7), New Jersey (6), New Hampshire (6), Rhode Island (2)
23rd and 24th1833–1837Connecticut (6), Georgia (9), Missouri (2), Mississippi (2), New Jersey (6), New Hampshire (5), Rhode Island (2)
25th and 26th1837–1841New Hampshire (5), Georgia (9), Missouri (2), Mississippi (2), New Jersey (6), Rhode Island (2)
27th1841–1843Alabama (5), Georgia (9), Missouri (2), Mississippi (2), New Hampshire (5), New Jersey (6), Rhode Island (2)
28th1843–1845New Hampshire (4), Georgia (8), Missouri (5), Mississippi (4)
29th1845–1847Iowa (2), New Hampshire (4), Missouri (5), Mississippi (4)
30th1847–1849Wisconsin (2)
31st to 34th1849–1857California (2)
35th to 37th1857–1863California (2), Minnesota (2)
38th to 42nd1863–1873California (3)
43rd to 47th1873–1883Florida (2), Kansas (3)
48th1883–1885Maine (4)
51st and 52nd1889–1893South Dakota (2)
53rd to 57th1893–1903South Dakota (2), Washington (2)
58th to 60th1903–1909North Dakota (2), South Dakota (2), Washington (3)
61st1909–1911North Dakota (2), South Dakota (2)
62nd1911–1913North Dakota (2), New Mexico (2), South Dakota (2)
63rd1913–1915Idaho (2), Montana (2), Utah (2)
64th1915–1917Idaho (2), Montana (2)
65th to 72nd1917–1933Idaho (2), Montana (2)
73rd1933–1935Kentucky (9), Minnesota (9), Missouri (13), North Dakota (2), Virginia (9)
74th to 77th1935–1943North Dakota (2)
78th to 80th1943–1949Arizona (2), New Mexico (2), North Dakota (2)
81st to 87th1949–1963New Mexico (2), North Dakota (2)
88th1963–1965Alabama (8), Hawaii (2), New Mexico (2)
89th and 90th1965–1969Hawaii (2), New Mexico (2)
91st1969–1971Hawaii (2)

See also

References

  1. ↑ The Australian Electoral System, p. 61
  2. ↑ "Le système électoral au Tchad - Comité de Suivi de l'Appel à la Paix et à la Réconciliation" (in French). 23 September 2015. Archived from the original on 2015-09-23. Retrieved 25 September 2020.
  3. ↑ One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Scrutin de Liste". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 24 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 487.
  4. ↑ Public Law 90-196, 2 U.S.C. § 2c

Sources

  • Martis, Kenneth C. (1982). The Historical Atlas of United States Congressional Districts. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company.
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