Plurality-at-large Voting - Usage of Block Voting

Usage of Block Voting

These countries use the block vote:

• Kuwait
• Laos
• Lebanon
• Mauritius
• Mongolia
• Syria
• Tonga
• Tuvalu

Block voting was used in the Australian Senate from 1901 to 1948 (from 1918, this was preferential block voting). It was used for multi-member constituencies in parliamentary elections in the United Kingdom until their abolition, and remains in use throughout England and Wales for some local elections. It is also used in Jersey, Guernsey, the Isle of Man, the Cayman Islands, the Falkland Islands and Saint Helena.

Plurality block voting is or was also used in the election of the Senate of Poland (until 2011), of the Parliament of Lebanon, the plurality seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council and for the National Assembly of Mauritius. In some Lebanese and Palestinian constituencies, there is only one seat to be filled; in the Palestinian election of 1996 there were only plurality seats, but in 2006 half the seats were elected by plurality, half by proportional representation nationwide.

A form of plurality block voting was used for the elections of both houses of Parliament in Belgium before proportional representation was implemented in 1900. The system, however, was combined with a system similar to a runoff election; when not enough candidates had the majority of the votes in the first round, a second round was held between the highest ranked candidates of the first round (with two times as many candidates as seats to be filled). In some constituencies there was only one seat to be filled.

Plurality block voting is also in use in the United States today. Although national elections and most state elections use single-member districts, some members of the Maryland House of Delegates, New Hampshire House of Representatives, and Vermont House of Representatives are elected by block voting from multi-member districts. In local elections such as for city council, however, block voting remains the most popular system in use.

In most of British Columbia, Canada, including Vancouver, plurality (there called "at-large" block voting) is used in local elections, in place of the ward system found elsewhere in Canada. When Toronto was amalgamated in 1997, the new entity's first election used a similar rule. Block voting was also in place in a number of multimember ridings of various Canadian provincial parliaments.

In Hong Kong, block voting is used for a tiny proportion of the territory's population to elect the members of the Election Committee, which is responsible for selecting the territory's Chief Executive.

Block voting was used in some constituencies for the House of Representatives of Japan in the first six general elections between 1890 and 1898: while the majority of seats was elected by plurality in 214 single-member districts, there were 43 two-member districts that elected their representatives by block voting.

Block voting is often used in corporate elections to elect the boards of directors of corporations including housing cooperatives, with each shareholder's vote being multiplied by the number of shares they own; however, cumulative voting is also popular.

The Bahá'í Faith uses a form of plurality-at-large voting to elect its governing councils at local, national, and international levels.

The Philippines is the country with the most extensive experience in plurality-at-large voting. Positions where there are multiple winners usually use plurality-at-large voting, the exception is the election for sectoral representatives in the House of Representatives. The members of the Senate and all local legislatures are elected via this method. The members of the Interim Batasang Pambansa (the parliament) were also elected under this method in 1978.