You are not the only one not to have heard of Single Non-Transferable Voting (SNTV). I am not sure why SNTV is not better known. Japan did use it for some time even a hundred years ago, and some countries use it even now - Vanuatu, Iraq, like that.
The difference between SNTV and plurality in multi-member districts (Block voting ) is that in SNTV each voter can only cast one votes so there is no way one group can take all the seats.
SNTV "chooses the n candidates who received the most votes." which is actually a good thing. a party-list PR system does not necessarily do that.
SNTV produces 86 percent or more of the results of STV,
(86 percent in recent Ireland election,
95 or so percent in the recent Scottish local authority election)
And recent analysis proves that STV in Ireland produces more proportional results than NZ MMP system.
so SNTV, which is 86 percent or more of STV, must be highly proportional.
Transferable votes are good. They make STV better than SNTV but not necessary for the proportionality of it. They do decrease the waste of votes.
You say "If you wanted proportional, a list-PR system within the same district would allow each party to name its candidates in their preferred order."
I respond a list-PR system within the same district would elect candidate put up by parties proportionally but not necessarily elect candidates supported by voters.
SNTV has advantage of X voting and use of multi-member districts (which in some cases are based on city boundaries)
and still it does these things:
- produces proportional results,
- ensures that large parties and small parties (although not all of them - there have to be some losers in any system) have representation in each district or city, (and thus overall),
- eliminates regionalism (artificial one-party sweeps of all the seats of a city or region),
- secures voter-selection of winners,
- produces large proportion of effective votes, and
- ensures a direct relationship between each voter of a large district (usually a whole city) and each of the elected members of that district.
SNTV works in such places as Vanuatu, This blogsite has a blog on the recent SNTV election in Vanuatu:
Thanks for reading.
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