Here is the source document for the info shown here:
Here is my own interpretation of the info:
According to the Vermont Legislative Research Service, there are several distinguishing characteristics of the possible forms of voting in a MMD: The number of votes that each voter can or must cast
1. Block voting (bloc voting): Voters receive as many votes as there are open seats, and can vote no more than once for a particular candidate. All votes must be used.
2. Block voting as used in Canada (formal name: Bloc with partial abstention (BPA): Voters may cast as many votes as there are open seats. and can vote no more than once for a particular candidate. Voters can elect not to use all of their votes.
3. Limited Voting more than one vote but not as many as the number of open seats. Used in Toronto when it was a MMD, from 1886 to 1894.
Used in Gibraltar in recent years
(casting just one vote is described next)
Type of votes cast The above forms of voting generally use X voting. Transferable votes are an option under the next form of voting.
4. Each voter casts just one vote - and it can be transferable or non-transferable.
Single Non-Transferable Voting (SNTV) uses X voting but as no one group can (under normal circumstances) take all the seat in the district, mixed representation results. Mixed representation is the hallmark of proportional representation. Not all mixed rep is proportional but the result is more balanced and therefore more fair than a one-party sweep of multiple seats.
SNTV has not been used in any election in Canada.
Single Transferable Voting (PR-STV) has all the benefits of SNTV. And further it reduces the number of wasted votes /ignored voters that plague FPTP and other forms of X voting. It has the drawback of ranked voting, which some consider to be irksomely-complicated for voters. PR-STV was used in five MMDs on the Prairies in the 20th Century. Limit of one vote per candidate or no such limit or something in between
Another distinguishing feature of voting is whether votes can be "lumped" on to a candidate or have to be cast with a limit of one for any specific candidate.
Cumulative: Voters may use their votes however they wish, such as casting all of them on a single candidate or casting one or more of them separately for different candidates. This system was not used in state legislative elections as of 2020. The last state to use the system was Illinois, which ended the practice in 1982.[5]
Other forms of voting where each voter can give no more than one vote for a specific candidate
Other forms of voting where each voter can give no more than say three votes for a specific candidate. This ensures a minimum size of the minority that can be assured of electing one candidate. Example: in Toronto city election of 1903, 12 members of the Board of Education were being elected. Each voter could cast up to 12 votes, but with no more than three given to any candidate. This meant that if one-quarter of the voters gave three votes to a candidate, he or she would be elected. If they did that with four candidates, the four would be elected - four out of 12. Any minority smaller than a quarter of the electorate would not be assured of electing even one candidate, due to the three-vote limit. All members' terms end at same time or staggered An election may either fill all the seats or only a portion of the seats in a MMD.
In Staggered elections in MMDs - Two or more legislators represent the same district with elections happening in different years due to staggered terms. If only two members, staggered elections become single-seat contests, but in MMDs with more than two seats, the staggered elections may be multi-seat contests.
More often, all the seats are filled at the same time, with concurrent terms.
(Staggered terms are used to allow experienced elected members to carry over to help train up the new crop and/or to bring down District Magnitude (the number being elected at one time) to the limit of the voting system being used.
New South Wales has 42 legislators in the chamber, but 21 is (perhaps) the upper limit of the use of STV. so the legislators there are elected in two batches.
MMDs does not always mean multi-seat contest Even where districts have more than one seat filled at the same time (either no staggered terms or the District Magnitude is high enough that staggered terms do not prevent two or more seats being filled at one time), still the seats may be filled through single-seat contests. This can be accomplished by what is termed MMDs with posts. Instead of running in a single pool of candidates, candidates are divided up, and each separate group runs for just one of the district's seats, as in a single-member district. Each voter may cast a vote for a candidate running for each post. This was how BC filled the seats in its MMDs in the 1952 and 1953 elections, elections when BC was not using Block Voting. Seat/post was also used in the four Toronto districts in the 1908 and 1911 provincial elections, (each electing two members), and in the three Winnipeg districts in the 1914 and 1915 provincial elections (each electing two members). In Canadian experience, no staggered elections were used at the provincial or federal level. But it was common at the municipal level. The type of Block voting where voters had to cast the same number of votes, was also not used in Canada. Voting in MMDs in Canada took these forms: Block Voting - where voters could cast as many votes as there were seats to fill and where there was no minimum of votes needed to be cast by voter. This is and was common in municipal elections, and was used in provincial elections in provinces from coast to coast (except Quebec) at one time or another.
Limited Voting - where voter cast two votes to elect three MLAs (Toronto)
STV - major cities in Alberta and Winnipeg from 1920s to 1950s
Cumulative Voting was used to elect some city officials in Toronto starting in 1903. and the Seat/Post system -
BC used this system to fill the seats in its MMDs in the 1952 and 1953 elections, elections when BC was using ranked votes and not using Block Voting. Seats were filled with the Alternative Voting election method.
Seat/post was also used in the four Toronto districts (East, North, West, South) (each electing two members) in the 1908 and 1911 provincial elections,
and in the four Toronto districts (Northeast, Northwest, Southeast, Southwest) (each electing two members) in the provincial elections held from 1914 to 1926. FPTP was used to fill the seats in these cases.
Seat/post was also used in the three Winnipeg districts in the 1914 and 1915 provincial elections (each electing two members). FPTP was used to fill the seats in these cases.
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here's more notes on MMDs (written in late 2023)
For clarity and in line with my system of five-level analysis of elections
voter's vote
transfers if any
district result
top-up if any
make-up of legislature.
when a person casts a single X voting, it can used in FPTP, SNTV or DMPR
FPTP (as I use it here as short-hand) is election of the most-popular person in the district and only that person. (whether or not he/she has majority)
SNTV and Double-Member PR (DMPR) are multiple-member districts although of two diff types.
say with two members elected in the district,
SNTV is simple -- the two with the most votes are elected (whether or not either of them has majority)
DMPR elects the most popular, and the second seat is allocated based on overall party vote tally (or percentage of votes in the district) and what needs to be done. for PR.
(hence not always is the second seat allocated to the second most-popular candidate.)
(whether or not either of them has majority in the district)
if DMPR can be used in Vermont, then SNTV could be used, it seems to me. simpler if that is consideeration.
of course with a two-party system, a two-seat district will not give you much diversity and each party will prob usually elect one seat in each district whatever the fair system used.
if unfair system used such as Block Voting (MNTV), then one or other party will score a clean sweep in a district often.
one goal is to avoid that (and other disproportional effects), while not offputting voters with unnecessary complications (however necessity is defined),
another important goal is seeing most votes used to elect someone.
it is up to each person to decide if benefits of overall PR trumps voters being able to see that the most-popular persons in the district are elected.
also question arises if using votes cast outside district to determine who wins the second seat in the district is worth the complication and I foresee a potential constitutional challenge.
the second seat is form of top up so why be in form of seat in a district when that person is not choice of plurality of voters in district anyway?
perhaps as way to almost grant voters in district approx. what they asked for
or to abide in most loose way with requirement that a district have no more than two seats.
(constitutional implication likely is that district votes - and only district votes - would elect the two members.
even single-member districts could produce proportional chamber if the seat is not allocated necessarily to the district leader.
but that is implied in any prescription for one or two-member districts.
use of ranked voting is variaiton of that -
the votes is counted for voters choice but in some cases not for his or her first choce. and even that has been challenged consitutionally - and usually upheld as being within bounds -
to elect someone to be one of two district rep. who is not choice at all of the voters in the district likely would be unconstitutional even if people think it would be PR and good (and nifty)
SNTV would be better in both regards, to my mind, although without PR balance of DMPR.
but if each party puts up one candidate, the two most-popular parties wil be elected. with two party system that does not give much depth but it would give opening for a third party if it can beat the least popular of the two main parties.
where you have have a multi-party system, SNTV in two seat district might do some good at freeing up politics. depolarization-wise.
luckily in Canada there is no constitutional requirement of one or two seats districts in provincial elections nor in federal elections
(although judge to come out with ruling on that sometimes soon)
federal ridings have used as many as two seats several times in our past.
Winnipeg used 10 seat district in prov elections
Edmonton 7 at the most
Calgary 6 at the most
Toronto three at the most
BC used multi-seat districts of as much as 6-seat district
Vancouver City 1916-1933 elected six members
in most cases unfortunately block voting was used and one party usually took clean sweep.
But there was no constitutional requirement that Block voting be used and each of those four provinces listed -- MB, AB, ON, BC -- used other systems in MMDs sometime in their history.
as well other provinces (NS, NB, NL, SK) used districts of two seats for many years.
(NS in the first settler election in Canada (1758) elected 16 members in block voting.)
PEI too had two seat districts but there they went with FPTP in two separate contests in each district.
Quebec pre-Confederation used MMDs of as much as three members
example Montreal and QC elected three members in 1858.
I am not sure if article of provincehood restrains the province to single member district (maybe someone can investigate and see!) - I hope not.
City elections often are at-large (or MMDs) with as many as 12 members being elected at once, again usually with Block Voting although multi-winner STV was used in 20 cities in western Canada for a period of time
Two periods for Saskatoon!
Calgary used STV for one long period of 44 years, electing as many as 7 at one time, plus three other instances of electing two at a time.
so in Canada we are not held by an arbitrary two-seat max straitjacket.
and we can adopt MMDs of five or more seats (and/or top up conceivably) and fair voting if we choose
- I don't see how judge could possibly say otherwise
but whether he will expicitly say that FPTP is unconstitutional is another question. - but again any other ruling would go against evidence.
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District Magnitude
It is noted that larger DM worsens proportionality where non-proportional system is used, while on the other hand, larger DM improves proportionality where fair voting is used.
Farrell and McAllister, The Australian Electoral System, p. 33:
"As is well known, in the case of non-proportional systems, the larger the 'district magnitude' (that is, the more seats in a district) the more disproportional the result (Precisely the reverse relationship exists for proportional systems.), and therefore the easier it is for larger parties to sweep the board [all the seats in a city] in a block vote system" compared to single-winner FPTP.
Larger DM means that fewer votes are wasted. This is the un-used quota where Droop is used. And also that the quota (the number of votes needed to take one seat) is lower.
But where non-proportional (FPTP or Block voting) is used, a one-party sweep of a city's multiple seats is possible. Just look at
Edmonton in 1921 when the Liberal took all the city's seats with 34 percent of the votes cast under Block Voting,
or 1959 where the Social Credit party took all the city's seats with less than half under FPTP also. In 1959 the sizable CCF vote was cracked by the boundaries of the city's nine seats.
In Calgary in 1959, the non-SC opposition managed to take one seat under FPTP. so comparison of Edmonton in 1921 with Calgary in 1959 shows that Block Voting with district of five produced a result that was worse proportionally than FPTP in a city split into seven districts. However STV (mostly reflecting effect of single voting in MMD of 5 to 7 seats) produced balanced, mixed rep. in each city from 1924 to 1955.
Rural-Urban PR (RUPR) would see good rep in each city and then having proportional top-up would improve fairness all-around.
The general principle "larger DM worsens proportionality where non-proportional system is used, while on the other hand, larger DM improves proportionality where fair voting is used." applies to difference between say 3-seat distrcit, five-seat district, ten-seat district, 21-seat district.
in a single-member district, you don't get any proportionality inside the district, no matter what electoral system you use. so I was not meaning to include SMDs and single winner FPTP in this principle.
We see this as early as 1925, even back before computers supposedly first made large DM possible. In one of the severest tests of STV, Ireland's Senatorial election of 1925 saw 19 elected in one contest. An average force of 43 men worked 14 days to count the 315,000 votes and conduct the 65 counts needed to choose the 19 winners.
see blog "1925 Ireland Senatorial election -- 19 elected in one of severest tests of STV")
see https://www.ark.ac.uk/elections/h1925.htm
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A flexible system of varying-sized MMDs, not MMDS per se, would obviate redistricting.
if you only use 5-seat districts, then any change must cause a change in district boundary, same as under inflexible system of SMDs.
but if say a city gets more population and thus needs another member -- or if the decision is made to correct a previous under-representation -, then under the flexible MMD system, you can simply add one more seat and still have a voter-per-member ratio within acceptable range.
My emphasis is on changing number of members in the district, but constant district boundaries, instead of FPTP where you have changes in boundaries but a constant one member per district.
In the urban settings, the MMDs I am talking about would be no larger than what the city mayor represents. In Canada's largest cities, the district would be not as large as that even. a district in the largest city would take in perhaps half the city or a third of it.
People want local representation -- that is, they want a member from where they live that represents them.
SMDs and FPTP will not give them that in a guaranteed fashion. A third or even more than half the members elected in SMDs under FPTP do not get votes from majority of the district votes cast.
Desire for local representation means that province-wide -- not to mention country-wide representation -- is too large. and that I agree with.
but to say then that only SMDs --with one member expected to represent all in the district -- is going too far the other way IMO
We have MMDs in use in many places even today - municipally
and we did use MMDs in many provinces, sometimes all the members in a legislature were elected in MMDs.
And even 11 ridings were two-member districts in the old days.
No one said that the representation was not local enough as far as I have seen.
but the problem was that fair voting was not used.
unhappy with that, we switched to SMDs and FPTP.
our level of electoral intelligence (or self-serving decisions by sitting politicians) - caused us to jump past the MMD/fair voting solution.
Just came across reference to Earl Grey (of tea fame), uncle of Earl Grey (of Grey cup fame)
in 1832 as British prime minister, he fought hard to lessen representation in the mini-districts -- rotten boroughs -- and the micro districts (pocket boroughs) which in most cases elected two members even though they sometimes had as few as ten voters or less even.
After two-year struggle he finally made headway when it was decided to maintain the HofC at the same size despite the cuts to the bad little districts, by adding more seats. the seats were added where they were needed -- in factory towns and cities.
With this guarantee of no-loss reform, the MPs accepted.
The House of Lords eventually also agreed under threat of civil unrest, mass upheaval.
Governments adopt reforms under these conditions:
- when it suits them such as changing rules as demographics/voting behaviour changes - BC in early 1950s. it did not work to preserve Lib-Cons government but that is why they did it.
- or when public pressure forces them to or when they don't want to let the other party be the good guy.
But trick is to get past the information stage - it is easy to explain why FPTP is bad - recently at public event no one had anything good to say about FPTP
but to get that knowledge to bear fruit, we have to get people emotional about it and get government to listen and take action.
perhaps Pilon had something to say about this in recent webinair (July 2023)?...
supplemental remarks on my other point:
Usually where MMDs are used (I think Vermont was mentioned) block voting is used - a sort of binocular FPTP. so no improvement on FPTP MMDs are only good if there is fair voting
the first requirement of fair voting is each voter gets just one vote. (or multiple but lump-able votes as under Cumulative voting) and that is where past experience of MMDs in Canada has mostly been a failure. barring use of limited voting in Toronto in 1886/1890 (MMD 3-seat district and each voter having two votes) and STV in AB and MB in 1920s-1950s. IMO, MMP would be great if it uses MMDs for the district seats (as Denmark does) Denmark uses party-list at district and overall level so that is one way to go. if you are going to have top-up, then SNTV at district level would set the balance fairly well for the top-up to polish up. or STV where votes rs can makr only as many preferences as they desire. which might come down to SNTV if voters are lazy or misunderstand that secondary preferences m]cannot be used against their first choices. and that would be fine -- single voting of any sort in MMD does good job of setting P balance (within the district) - especially if you have top-up to polish it up (to add in small parties that have say five percent of votes across the province but not say ten percent in any one city for example). if party list is though to be important, then a system where votes are cast for candidate, but then transferred within the same party, would work the same as party list but with the party's list arranged by voters. Such a non-ranking but transferable vote system could be the Gove system where each candidate sets where the votes are transferred, if the votes are to be transferred.. most members would choose their votes to go to fellow running mates on the same party slate, same effect as party list, and same as voter indicate in STV. under Gove voters would h have choice vote for the person knowing where vote might be transferred to or vote for someone else in the same party, again knowing where the vote might be transferred to or vote for someone in a different party ... or someone in a different party again ... etc. much more choice than FPTP where voter has choice of various one-person party lists But not as much work as STV where voter has to mark multiple back-up preferences to have best chance to be sure to have vote used to elect someone, even if no matter how many preferences you mark, the vote might never be transferred, - due to it, in many cases, being used to elect the first choice marked. Gove system has never been used in any election I know of but it could work well --as balance of voter choice, intra-party transfer plus cross-party transfer where necessary, few votes wasted, hihg level of effective votes, party proportionality achieved through winners being elected by the same number of votes, same as under STV or party list/MMP Gove would be quota based same as STV and party list. also it would be quicker than STV because votes do not have to be gathered together - the transfers could be done mathematically as soon as you know first count vote tallies
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in two seat ridings federally,
Block Voting was always used. (but not all votes cast two votes and that was allowed.
like FPTP, BV gives each voter as many votes as seats to fill, so the two systems are alike in that way as well as in both having non-transferable votes and both using simple plurality to find winners.
Prov. two-seat districts
Complicating the analysis of two-seat districts that were used at the provincial level, in every province from BC to NFLD
(Quebec had them only prior to Confederation),
two different voting systems were used, other than BV:
- STV
- brace yourself - here's an exotic one used in MB (Winnipeg), BC and in one or two Martimes provinces -- the post system where despite two-seat district each seat was filled through a separate contest (in BC (1952, 1953) through IRV, the rest through FPTP)
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where a Canadian prov. district had more than two seats
(DM stretched up to as many as six seats in a district using BV and 10 in a district using STV),
we see the use of:
Limited Voting
STV
BV.
(BV meant much more counting of votes cast with no improvement in PR compared to FPTP. SNTV means same number of votes to count as FPTP but much more fairness.)
neither List PR nor SNTV have ever been used in Canada gov't elections.
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