General ticket

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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This system is largely seen as outdated and undemocratic due to its extreme majoritarian results, and has mostly been replaced by party-list proportional (allowing fair representation to all parties) or first-past-the-post voting (allowing voters to vote for individual candidates in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[edit]

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[edit]

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
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[citation needed] 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)[citation needed] 59 electoral districts[citation needed] 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[edit]

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[citation needed]
Chad Chad National Assembly 2011 ?[citation needed] 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[citation needed]
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[edit]

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 13 of the regional councillors, and favours the largest party of that council's election.

Italy[edit]

In Italy, this system applies to 15 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[edit]

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[edit]

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
1st 1789–1791 Connecticut (5), New Jersey (4), New Hampshire (3), Pennsylvania (8)
2nd 1791–1793 Connecticut (5), New Jersey (4), New Hampshire (3)
3rd 1793–1795 Connecticut (7), Georgia (2), New Jersey (5), New Hampshire (4), Pennsylvania (13), Rhode Island (2)
4th and 5th 1795–1799 Connecticut (7), Georgia (2), New Jersey (5), New Hampshire (4), Rhode Island (2)
6th 1799–1801 Connecticut (7), Georgia (2), New Hampshire (4), Rhode Island (2)
7th 1801–1803 Connecticut (7), Georgia (2), New Jersey (5), New Hampshire (4), Rhode Island (2)
8th 1803–1805 Connecticut (7), Georgia (4), New Jersey (6), New Hampshire (5), Rhode Island (2), Tennessee (3)
9th to 12th 1805–1813 Connecticut (7), Georgia (4), New Jersey (6), New Jersey (5), Rhode Island (2)
13th 1813–1815 Connecticut (7), Delaware (2), Georgia (6), New Hampshire (6), Rhode Island (2), Vermont (6)
14th to 16th 1815–1821 Connecticut (7), Delaware (2), Georgia (6), New Jersey (6), New Hampshire (6), Rhode Island (2), Vermont (6)
17th 1821–1823 Connecticut (7), Delaware (2), Georgia (6), New Jersey (6), New Hampshire (6), Rhode Island (2)
18th 1823–1825 Connecticut (6), Georgia (7), New Jersey (6), New Hampshire (6), Rhode Island (2), Vermont (5)
19th 1825–1827 Connecticut (6), Georgia (7), New Jersey (6), New Hampshire (6), Rhode Island (2)
20th 1827–1829 Connecticut (6), New Jersey (6), New Hampshire (6), Rhode Island (2)
21st and 22nd 1829–1833 Connecticut (6), Georgia (7), New Jersey (6), New Hampshire (6), Rhode Island (2)
23rd and 24th 1833–1837 Connecticut (6), Georgia (9), Missouri (2), Mississippi (2), New Jersey (6), New Hampshire (5), Rhode Island (2)
25th and 26th 1837–1841 New Hampshire (5), Georgia (9), Missouri (2), Mississippi (2), New Jersey (6), Rhode Island (2)
27th 1841–1843 Alabama (5), Georgia (9), Missouri (2), Mississippi (2), New Hampshire (5), New Jersey (6), Rhode Island (2)
28th 1843–1845 New Hampshire (4), Georgia (8), Missouri (5), Mississippi (4)
29th 1845–1847 Iowa (2), New Hampshire (4), Missouri (5), Mississippi (4)
30th 1847–1849 Wisconsin (2)
31st to 34th 1849–1857 California (2)
35th to 37th 1857–1863 California (2), Minnesota (2)
38th to 42nd 1863–1873 California (3)
43rd to 47th 1873–1883 Florida (2), Kansas (3)
48th 1883–1885 Maine (4)
51st and 52nd 1889–1893 South Dakota (2)
53rd to 57th 1893–1903 South Dakota (2), Washington (2)
58th to 60th 1903–1909 North Dakota (2), South Dakota (2), Washington (3)
61st 1909–1911 North Dakota (2), South Dakota (2)
62nd 1911–1913 North Dakota (2), New Mexico (2), South Dakota (2)
63rd 1913–1915 Idaho (2), Montana (2), Utah (2)
64th 1915–1917 Idaho (2), Montana (2)
65th to 72nd 1917–1933 Idaho (2), Montana (2)
73rd 1933–1935 Kentucky (9), Minnesota (9), Missouri (13), North Dakota (2), Virginia (9)
74th to 77th 1935–1943 North Dakota (2)
78th to 80th 1943–1949 Arizona (2), New Mexico (2), North Dakota (2)
81st to 87th 1949–1963 New Mexico (2), North Dakota (2)
88th 1963–1965 Alabama (8), Hawaii (2), New Mexico (2)
89th and 90th 1965–1969 Hawaii (2), New Mexico (2)
91st 1969–1971 Hawaii (2)

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  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 domainChisholm, 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[edit]

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

External links[edit]