Canada's first recorded election - 1758 Halifax
To elect members of the First General Assembly of Nova Scotia
According to Proclamation, the regulations of the election stipulated:
"That there shall be elected for the province at large until the same shall be divided into counties, 16 members; for the Township of Halifax Four; for the Township of Lunenburg, Two. ...
nor shall any Elector have more than one Vote for each Member to be chosen for the province at large, or for any Township; and that each Freeholder present at such Election, and giving his Vote for one Member for the province at large, shall be obliged to vote also for the other Fifteen."
(from document at end of link at 1758 in
(https://nslegislature.ca/sites/default/files/demo/pdfs/0021_1758-05-20_Proclamation.pdf)
So it appears to be Block Voting - each voter casting 2 or 4 or 16 votes (not up to 16, but actually had to be full 16). That would have meant high vote count except each 50 voters were electing two reps in any new districts in the future so likely that showed how few were voting. Each district had voter to member ratio of 25 to one member.
two-seat district would have had 100 votes cast by 50 voters
four-seat district would have had 400 votes cast by 100 voters
16-seat district would have had 6400 votes cast by 400 voters.
(Seems like a lot of extra work when each voter casting just one vote works so much better.)
Still interesting that it was a multi-member district. The election was not at all First Past The Post, generally regarded as the natural way to elect representatives in Canada.
Too bad it was not SNTV! Under that system, each voter casts just one vote in district that elects multiple members. The combination of Single voting and multi-member district produces mixed, roughly proportional representation.
No party labels were used so it cannot be seen how proportional or balanced were the results. Perhaps just one voting bloc took all 16 seats.
And the approximately 400 voters in the at-large elections cast 6400 votes, a much higher vote counting job than was actually needed!
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