As we talk about multi-member districts as basic building block of PR, we have to think about what kind of voting is used in those MMDs.
Each voter having one vote should not be taken as read, as the obvious chioice when using MMDs.
In the past, Single Voting has certainly not been the case.
All provinces have used MMDs in their history,
and 11 ridings have been MMDs
Some provinces have even elected all their members in the legislature through MMDs (albeit mostly in two-member districts)
but in all but 18 elections and in all but 5 districts,
the seats in those MMDs have been done with voter casting multiple votes:
using plurality block voting
or in the case of Toronto in 1886 and 1890 by Limited Voting.
or confusingly, with each seat in the MMD filled by separate FPTP election.
Only in Edmonton and Calgary (1924-1955), and Medicine Hat (1926),
and Winnipeg (1920-1953), and St. Boniface (1949, 1953) has each voter been given just one vote in a MMD.
That is in prov or federal elections.
STV has been used in city elections as well -- in western Canada anyway --
But there too, where at-large or MM-wards have been used, the great preponderance of elections have been held using Block voting, not single voting at all.
Block voting has produced one-party sweeps of all of a district's seats again and again.
And when each seat is filled through separate FPTP elections, the common effect is also usually a one-party sweep.
Limited Voting in Toronto produced mixed representation but it is hit or miss generally.
So when we call for multi-member districts, let's be sure to call for each voter just having one vote in any MMDs.
That means the system of voting should be STV or Single Non-transferable Voting (SNTV) if it is thought best to avoid ranked voting.
Of the two, STV is the most certain to give proportional results.
The voter's single vote in a multi-member riding - and that vote being a ranked ballot - would lead to the diverse electoral support for multiple and various political affiliations in each riding to be accurately represented
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