The general ticket, also known as party block voting (PBV),[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. The system 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.
This system is largely seen as outdated and undemocratic due to its extreme winner-take-all nature, and has mostly been replaced by methods based on proportional representation or single-member districts. When used together with multi-member geographic districts, it is highly vulnerable to gerrymandering and majority reversals. An example of the latter can be seen in the US Electoral College, where all but four members are elected using the general ticket.
The system is occasionally used in superposition with party-list proportional representation, in which case the combined method is called a majority bonus system. The system is used in Italy for one-fifth of their regional councillors.
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.
The following countries use party block voting in coexistence with other systems in different districts.
| Country | Legislative body | Latest election (year) | (Seats perconstituency) | Electoral system | Total seats | Share of seats elected by PBV | Constituencies | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 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 | ||||
| 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 | |||
| Singapore | Parliament | 2020 | First-past-the-post (FPTP/SMP) and party block voting (PBV) | 104 (93 directly elected) | |||||
| 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 by first-past-the-post in single-member congressional districts. | 538 | All states except Maine and Nebraska, where congressional districts are also used as constituencies | |||
Countries using party block voting in parallel with proportional representation.
| Country | Legislative body | Latest election (year) | (Seats perconstituency) | Electoral system | Total seats | Share of seats elected by PBV | Constituencies | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 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 | ||
| 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 | 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 | 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 | ||
| Greece | Hellenic Parliament | 2019 | Majority bonus system (MBS) | ? | ? | nationwide | |||
| San Marino | Grand and General Council | 2019 | Majority bonus system (MBS) | ? | ? | nationwide | |||
The scrutin de liste (Fr., voting by ballot, and, 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, also called, under which the electors in each arrondissement returned one deputy.
In Italy, this system applies to 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.
See main article: article and Group representation constituency. In Singapore, the general ticket system, locally known as the, 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.
Ticket voting is used to elect Electoral College for presidential elections, except for electors in Maine and Nebraska, 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:
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.[3] 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 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1789–1791 | Connecticut (5), New Jersey (4), New Hampshire (3), Pennsylvania (8) | ||
| 1791–1793 | Connecticut (5), New Jersey (4), New Hampshire (3) | ||
| 1793–1795 | Connecticut (7), Georgia (2), New Jersey (5), New Hampshire (4), Pennsylvania (13), Rhode Island (2) | ||
| 1795–1799 | Connecticut (7), Georgia (2), New Jersey (5), New Hampshire (4), Rhode Island (2) | ||
| 1799–1801 | Connecticut (7), Georgia (2), New Hampshire (4), Rhode Island (2) | ||
| 1801–1803 | Connecticut (7), Georgia (2), New Jersey (5), New Hampshire (4), Rhode Island (2) | ||
| 1803–1805 | Connecticut (7), Georgia (4), New Jersey (6), New Hampshire (5), Rhode Island (2), Tennessee (3) | ||
| 1805–1813 | Connecticut (7), Georgia (4), New Jersey (6), New Jersey (5), Rhode Island (2) | ||
| 1813–1815 | Connecticut (7), Delaware (2), Georgia (6), New Hampshire (6), Rhode Island (2), Vermont (6) | ||
| 1815–1821 | Connecticut (7), Delaware (2), Georgia (6), New Jersey (6), New Hampshire (6), Rhode Island (2), Vermont (6) | ||
| 1821–1823 | Connecticut (7), Delaware (2), Georgia (6), New Jersey (6), New Hampshire (6), Rhode Island (2) | ||
| 1823–1825 | Connecticut (6), Georgia (7), New Jersey (6), New Hampshire (6), Rhode Island (2), Vermont (5) | ||
| 1825–1827 | Connecticut (6), Georgia (7), New Jersey (6), New Hampshire (6), Rhode Island (2) | ||
| 1827–1829 | Connecticut (6), New Jersey (6), New Hampshire (6), Rhode Island (2) | ||
| 1829–1833 | Connecticut (6), Georgia (7), New Jersey (6), New Hampshire (6), Rhode Island (2) | ||
| 1833–1837 | Connecticut (6), Georgia (9), Missouri (2), Mississippi (2), New Jersey (6), New Hampshire (5), Rhode Island (2) | ||
| 1837–1841 | New Hampshire (5), Georgia (9), Missouri (2), Mississippi (2), New Jersey (6), Rhode Island (2) | ||
| 1841–1843 | Alabama (5), Georgia (9), Missouri (2), Mississippi (2), New Hampshire (5), New Jersey (6), Rhode Island (2) | ||
| 1843–1845 | New Hampshire (4), Georgia (8), Missouri (5), Mississippi (4) | ||
| 1845–1847 | Iowa (2), New Hampshire (4), Missouri (5), Mississippi (4) | ||
| 1847–1849 | Wisconsin (2) | ||
| 1849–1857 | California (2) | ||
| 1857–1863 | California (2), Minnesota (2) | ||
| 1863–1873 | California (3) | ||
| 1873–1883 | Florida (2), Kansas (3) | ||
| 1883–1885 | Maine (4) | ||
| 1889–1893 | South Dakota (2) | ||
| 1893–1903 | South Dakota (2), Washington (2) | ||
| 1903–1909 | North Dakota (2), South Dakota (2), Washington (3) | ||
| 1909–1911 | North Dakota (2), South Dakota (2) | ||
| 1911–1913 | North Dakota (2), New Mexico (2), South Dakota (2) | ||
| 1913–1915 | Idaho (2), Montana (2), Utah (2) | ||
| 1915–1917 | Idaho (2), Montana (2) | ||
| 1917–1933 | Idaho (2), Montana (2) | ||
| 1933–1935 | Kentucky (9), Minnesota (9), Missouri (13), North Dakota (2), Virginia (9) | ||
| 1935–1943 | North Dakota (2) | ||
| 1943–1949 | Arizona (2), New Mexico (2), North Dakota (2) | ||
| 1949–1963 | New Mexico (2), North Dakota (2) | ||
| 1963–1965 | Alabama (8), Hawaii (2), New Mexico (2) | ||
| 1965–1969 | Hawaii (2), New Mexico (2) | ||
| 1969–1971 | Hawaii (2) |