Block Voting elects multiple members in a district. This has advantages (as will be explained below) but the way votes are cast under Block Voting usually produces dis-proportionality. Under Block Voting, each voter can cast as many votes as the number of seats to be filled, and simple plurality determines the winners. Therefore a single group, even if it is less than half the voters, can take all the seats. Such indeed happened in 1921 when a single party took all the Edmonton seats with only about a third of the vote.
An unusual form of Block Voting is multiple preferential voting where each voter casts multiple transferable votes. The secondary preferences in this system are contingency votes, only used if the higher preference(s) are found to be ineffective. Multiple preferential voting has not been used in any election in Canada. It suffers all the disadvantages of Block Voting (allowing a single party to take all the seats and a great number of votes cast) and unlike STV, does not dependably produce a mixed proportional crops of members.
Like under STV, the Multiple Transferable Voting's use of transferable votes does reduce the number of wasted votes, but that is really its only advantage.
By not producing mixed representation, Multiple Transferable Voting has the disadvantage that it denies significant neighbourhood (geographical-concentrated) minorities from getting representation. This is a disadvantage shared by Block Voting as well. (This observation was mentioned in the Proportional Representation Review magazine, in April 1924, p. 56.)
Besides allowing a minority to take all the seats, Block Voting has the disadvantage that it denies significant neighbourhood minorities from getting representation. (Representation of significant neighbourhood minorities is produced by STV and by ward elections.)
A major advantage of Block Voting over ward elections - and First Past The Post elections in general - is that it offers every voter a wide variety of choice and does not force the voter to be represented by his neighour if he or she prefers someone else. The same advantage is shared by STV and Limited Voting (both of which were used in past Canada elections) and also by more exotic forms of multi-member elections such as SNTV and Cumulative Voting.
STV dependably produces a mixed proportional crops of members; Limited Voting can do this too but not as dependably.
Block Voting is used in most city elections in Canada today. Every city that does not have wards uses Block Voting.
Block Voting was used in all federal districts any time where more than one member was elected. Halifax, Victoria and Ottawa are among the cities that at one time elected multiple members in one district. (Ottawa's election of multiple members may have encouraged its voters to approve the switch to STV-PR in 1915. The switch though was blocked by the provincial government so never happened.)
Block Voting was also used in all provincial districts where more than one member was elected,
with these exceptions:
- where the members were elected in separate contests, such as BC in the early 1950s and Winnipeg in the 1910s,
- where Limited Voting was used - Toronto in the late 1800s, and
- where STV was used - Edmonton and Calgary from 1926 to 1955; Winnipeg 1920 to 1953; Medicine Hat in 1926; St. Boniface in 1949 and 1953.
(see my blog "Variety of electoral systems used in Canada's past" https://montopedia.wixsite.com/montopedia/post/variety-of-electoral-systems-used-in-canada).
During the use of Block Voting in Canada, it occasionally produced mixed roughly-proportional representation, but usually one party took all the seats in the district, producing dis-proportional representation.
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Preferential Block Voting is just like PR-STV except that voters cast multiple votes, each with back-up preferences. At least that is how I think it works.
The single largest group can take all the seats so Preferential Block Voting is not dependably proportional.
Block Voting (of any sort) also has the problem that you count a number of votes many times more than the number of voters who turn out.
Edmonton 1922 Block Voting
10,923 voters cast approx. 54,000 votes in aldermanic election
Edmonton 1923 STV (at-large)
13,026 voters cast 11,851 valid votes in aldermanic election.
1923: it seems 1000 votes were spoiled perhaps due to voter marking X not a number as required in preferential ranking.
But in reference to the valid votes cast, we see that only 3500 of the 13,000 voters did not see their first preference candidate elected, a much lower portion of un-satisfied voters than is normal under FPTP.
STV made for a much easier count - at least in first count.
STV vote transfers meant many votes were counted again and again but the first count involved fewer votes than Block voting had done previously.
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