Old England
Multi-member districts were used at the start of parliamentary democracy in old England. In 1265, Simon de Montfort convened a Parliament that contained two knights from each shire (county), and two burgesses from each borough (city) — one of the earliest examples of representative parliaments in the world. Single-winner First Past The Post did not come into use until later.
In 1793, Charles Grey (Earl Grey, II), a 28-year-old MP, brought the attention of the House of Commons to a petition formulated by the society named the Friends of the People. The petition described the iniquitous districting and allocation of seats in the country and called for "parliamentary reform." The petition related that at that time, The House of Commons was to a large degree elected in two-seat districts and many of those had rather few voters, thus creating safe seats for the Tory party.
It said there were 70 MPs elected in 35 very small boroughs ("burgage tenements" where the landlord determined how tenants would vote), 88 MPs elected in 44 boroughs of less than 50 voters each, 36 elected in 18 boroughs with less than 100 voters each, 52 elected in 26 boroughs with less than 200 voters in each. These plus 45 members elected in Scottish boroughs and burghs with less than 250 voters in each (the number of seats in each is unknown) made up the majority of seats in the House of Commons. Thus perhaps as few as 20,000 voters determined the composition of the majority in the House of Commons. Britain at the time had more than 10 million people.
The History of Reform (1884) said that Proportional Representation (minority representation) was not considered a pressing matter in the early 1800s and gives the reason "our forefathers suffered too much and too long from the representation of nothing but a minority, to think much about that in their plans of reform." (p. 83)
The House of Commons voted down Earl Grey's motion in 1793 but years later he rose to be Prime Minister and then he and his Whig party pushed through the Great Reform Bill of 1832.
=============================
In 1831, just before the passage of the Reform Bill, So only 106 MPs were elected in single-member districts.
540 MPs were elected in two-member districts.
12 MPs were elected in four-member districts.
Britain's MPs were elected in these various types of constitituencies:
BC = Borough constituencies
CC = County constituencies
UC = University constituencies
(number shows district magnitude)
BC-1 BC-2 BC-4 CC-1 CC-2 CC-4 UC-1 UC-2
England 4 195 2 0 38 1 2 242 dist.
E's MPs 4 390 8 0 76 4 4 486 MPs
Wales 13 12 1 26 dist.
W's MPs 13 0 0 12 2 27 MPs
Scotland 15 30 45 dist.
S's MPs 15 0 0 30 45 MPs
Ireland 31 2 0 0 32 1 66 dist.
Irish MPs 31 4 0 0 64 1 100 MPs
Total districts 63 197 2 42 71 1 1 2 379 dist. tot
Total MPs 63 394 8 42 142 4 1 4 658 MPs tot
(The Monmouthshire districts (a 2-seat County constituency and a single-member Borough constituency) is included in Wales.)
==========================
By passage of the Reform Bill,
56 "rotten boroughs" (all but one having two seats) were disbanded altogether;
30 "rotten boroughs" lost their second member (going down to being just a single-member district);
one district (Weymouth and Weyton Regis) went down from four seats to two.
Altogether 143 English MPs lost their seats.
But the point of the reform was not to change the number of MPs in the House so the following additions were made to cover the reduction.
The Act created 130 new seats in England and Wales:
-- 26 English counties were divided into two divisions with each division being represented by two members.
-- 8 English counties and 3 Welsh counties each received an additional representative.
-- Yorkshire, which was represented by four MPs before the Act (including the City of York, a separate district within the county), was given two additional MPs and split into three districts -- East Riding, West Riding and North Riding -- so that each of its three ridings was represented by two MPs).
-- 22 large towns were given two MPs.
(This information and much more detail can be found in Alexander Paul's 1884 book The History of Reform - A Record of the Struggle for the Representation of the People in Parliament, available for viewing online on the Hathi Trust website.)
Thus at least 88 districts elected two members each, or more (three or four were used occasionally). Usually block voting was used to elect the members in these, but sometimes other voting systems were used, as described next.
In 1867 some switched from Block Voting to Limited Voting. Co-incidentally this change was done at the time of Canada's Confederation. The Limited Voting system "was applied in England to constituencies returning more than two members from 1867 to 1885…. Limited Voting was applied to 13 constituencies each returning three or four members and included Glasgow, Birmingham and the City of London." (Phillips, Challenges to the Voting System, 1867-1974 (p. 17)
In 1885 the "Third Reform Bill" passed. In it or the related Redistribution of Seats Act (1885), the number of multi-member districts was cut back decisively. After 1885 only 54 MPs were elected in multi-member districts.
Major redistribution under the Act as follows:
Parliamentary boroughs (later known as borough constituencies):
All these units with a population of 15,000 or less ceased to have separate representation and were merged into a wider division (constituency) of their county – namely 79 constituencies were disenfranchised.
Six other boroughs were also merged into the county divisions: four that included large extents of countryside (Aylesbury, Cricklade, East Retford, Shoreham) and two that had been disenfranchised for corruption (Macclesfield and Sandwich).[10]
Those with populations between 15,000 and 50,000 were to have their representation reduced from two MPs to one, namely 76 constituencies.
Two-seat districts
Those with populations of more than 50,000 (23 in all) continued to be a set of two-member constituencies
The City of London would have its representation reduced to two MPs and remain undivided. (The city was represented by four MPs until 1885, when this was cut to two, and in 1950 the constituency, still sized at only a square mile of downtown space with very few residents in 1950, was abolished.)
The Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and Dublin would each return two MPs.
The number of seats in the Commons was increased from 652 to 670, inclusive of Ireland.
so 54 MPs out of 670 elected in MMDs meant that after 1885 only 8 percent of MPs were elected in MMDs (two-seat districts).
As block voting was used to fill the seats, there was little fairness in the district results despite the potential that MMDs, even two-seat districts, had for fairness if only single voting is used.
Although later the University seats were filled using STV.
STV was used to elect some members of the House of Commons in MM districts for many years. In 1918 STV was adopted for the university constituencies of Cambridge, Oxford, and others. These constituencies, which it seems had two seats each, used STV until their abolition in 1948 (or 1922 in the case of Dublin University).
As of 1948, the United Kingdom stopped using multi-member districts at all in national elections.
========
"Multi-member constituencies existed in the Parliament of the United Kingdom and its predecessor bodies in the component parts of the United Kingdom from the earliest era of elected representation until they were abolished by the Representation of the People Act, 1948."
(From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-member_constituencies_in_the_Parliament_ of_the_United_Kingdom).
In 2016 the Boundaries Review Commission reviewed the old-time use of multi-member districts and posited that it ws useful way to proceed. (But the ridings stayed being single-member districts anyway.)
Its report said
"As an example, Britain’s counties and major cities have the merit of being both grounded in history whilst retaining distinct administrative functions and common cultures. People identify with the county or major city they inhabit. These are also large enough that it is unlikely that redrawing boundaries will become necessary in the future. As the population expands or contracts, the number of MPs can be adapted accordingly.
And multi-member constituencies could easily be adapted to proportional voting systems in the future if the population wanted it. For the very largest counties and cities a subdivision could be made, rather like the historic Ridings of Yorkshire [when Yorkshire was broken up into East Riding, West Riding and North Riding]
And large constituencies returning five to ten MPs would give smaller parties a chance to mitigate the “wasted votes” syndrome felt by UKIP, the Greens – even the Liberal Democrats...."
see also Electoral Systems and Electoral Reform in Historical Perspective by David Klemperer
https://consoc.org.uk/publications/electoral-systems-and-electoral-reform-in-historical-perspective/
========================
The use of MMDs in Canada (federally, in each of the provinces and in two Territories) are described in this Montopedia blogs:
The use of MMDs in the U.S. is described in this blog:
===================================================
Comments