Block Voting is not necessarily less proportional than First Past The Post. Both are not proportional if we look at ensuring that the majority gets majority of seats and every substantial minority gets some representation.
Block Voting is plural voting and plurality winning in Multiple-Member District (MMD))
First Past The Post (FPTP) is single voting and plurality winning in single-member district (SMD)).
Under both, a single party can make a sweep of seats
say win all the seats in a city, whether the city is a group of SMDs or is district-ed as one single MMD.
I would say they are both just as bad as the other -
if anything, Block Voting (plural voting in MMD; plurality winners) is sometimes more proportional than FPTP.
Block Voting does produce mixed representation occasionally
Calgary 1921 Prov AB election for example
especially if popular parties do not run full slates or if Independent candidates are popular.
and an MMD means voters have large offering of candidates compared to FPTP
and an MMD means there is less chance of gerrymandering -
no chance of gerrymandering at all if city boundaries are used to set a city-wide MM district.
But under Block voting
say with city-wide MMD and each voter able to cast as many votes as seats to fill,
the most-popular party across the city may take all the seats, with no leeway for representation of other minorities - either other parties or neighbourhood sentiment.
FPTP does ensure that the largest group in perhaps 1/7th or 1/12th of a city will take a seat.
But that 1/7th or 1/12th-city district can be gerrymandered, creating unfair representation.
The election of that "local" politician in the 1/7th or 1/12th district could be good proportion-wise -
say if the group getting a seat is the tip of the iceberg of un-represented workers or women or Latinos or whatever across the city as a whole
The election of that "local" politician in the 1/7th or 1/12th district could be not so good proportion-wise or any otherwise-wise -
if it is a spokesperson of a minor group of no general acceptability--
say a spokesman for the 1-percent-ers or a gang leader of tear-it-all-downers or party-it-up-ers
who happen to be concentrated enough in a gated community or in a slum or in an entertainment street to have local plurality,
or if the local politician is a single-issue candidate who will not apply himself or herself to solving other problems than the one local issue they feel strongly about which is not of interest outside that small community.
SO FPTP or Block Voting are both bad, but one or other may be somewhat less bad than the other sometimes.
STV (and any form of PR) on the other hand would give
majority of seats to majority of voters (whether in one party or in several)
and
give minority of the seats to each substantial minority.
allowing neighbourhod representation if it has numbers enough
and
general balance and fairness -
oh and most votes would be used to elect someone -
so there would be a large proportion of Effective Votes!
[a bit of free verse, there!)
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Plurality (in FPTP or Block Voting) to me means a relative "more" than others
Majority (in IRV, for example) is more than all the others put together.)
FPTP and Block Voting give seats to those who have plurality.
in FPTP each voter cast one vote
in Block Voting he or she can cast more than one.
In STV , a voter can cast a single vote - mark a first preference but also has ability to mark back-up preferences.
Because Block Voting (plural voting in MMD) allows one party to take all the seats, it is about as bad as FPTP.
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