General ticket

Thegeneral ticket,also known asparty block voting(PBV) orticket voting,^[1]is a type ofblock votingin which voters opt for a party, or a team's set list of candidates, and the highest-polling party/team becomes the winner. Unless specifically altered, this electoral system (at-largevoting) results in the victorious political party receiving100%of the seats. Rarely used today, the general ticket is usually applied in more than one multi-member district, which theoretically allows regionally strong minority parties to win some seats, but the strongest party nationally still typically wins with alandslide.

This system is largely seen as outdated and undemocratic due to its extrememajoritarianresults, and has mostly been replaced byparty-list proportional(allowing fair representation to all parties) orfirst-past-the-post voting(allowing voters to vote for individual candidates insingle-member districts). Similarly to first-past-the-post and other non-proportional district based methods it is highly vulnerable togerrymanderingand majority reversal (when the party getting the most votes does not win the most seats). An example for the latter is theUS Electoral College,the members of which are (overwhelmingly) elected using the general ticket.

In modernparty-list systems,a full or partial return by theparty-list proportional systemis common. The partial return is referred to as amajority bonusor majorityjackpotsystem, such modern systems award winners among more than the highest-polling party, if a low vote threshold is reached by a minority party, and often are counterweighted to do justice to the overall votes cast for smaller parties. This is used in France and Italy for a third and fifth of their regional councillors respectively, generally who then serve the regionat-large.

Usage[edit]

At the national level it was used for as many as seven of the states, for any given regularly convened US Congress, in theUS House of Representativesbefore 1967 but mainly before 1847; and in France, in the pre-World War Idecades of theThird Republicwhich began in 1870. It is in use in theParliament of Singaporeas to its dominant type of constituencies, those being multi-member, however moderated by the inclusion of at least one person of a different race than the others in any "team" (which is not necessarily a party team) which is selected by voters.

Fully majoritarian systems[edit]

Countries using only party block voting or party block voting (in multi-member districts) mixed with a single-winner methods insingle-member districts.

Country	Legislative body	Latest election (year)	(Seats per constituency)		Total seats	Constituencies	Governmental system	Notes
Côte d'Ivoire(Ivory Coast)	National Assembly	2021		First-past-the-post(FPTP/SMP) in single-member districts andparty block voting (PBV)in multi-member districts	255	electoral districts^{[citation needed]}	Presidential system
Egypt	House of Representatives	2020	1 (local districts), 42-100 (list districts)	Two-round system(TRS) andparty block voting (PBV/General ticket)^{[citation needed]}	59	electoral districts^{[citation needed]}	Semi-presidential system
Singapore	Parliament	2020		First-past-the-post(FPTP/SMP) andparty block voting(PBV)	104 (93 directly elected)
United States	Electoral College	2020	1-54	The electors of theElectoral College(who have opportunity to elect thePresident of the United States) are elected byGeneral ticketin 48 states based on state-wide party vote tallies. Nebraska and Maine use the general ticket method for 2 statewide electors each, with the other electors chosen based on the plurality of presidential vote tallies, one per congressional district.	538	states and Washington D.C (except Maine and Nebraska, where the congressional districts also work as constituencies)	Presidential system	Alaska used FPTP in the 2020 election, IRV/IRV will be used first in the next (2024) presidential election.

Mixed systems[edit]

Countries using party block voting as part of a mixed system (combined withproportional representation)

Country	Legislative body	Latest election (year)	(Seats per constituency)		Total seats	Share of seats elected by PBV	Constituencies	Governmental system
Andorra	General Council	2019	2 (local districts) / 14 (nationwide constituency)	Parallel voting /superposition(MMM): Party block voting (PBV)locally +list PRnationwide	28	50%	7 parishes, 1 nationwide constituency	Parliamentary system
Cameroon	National Assembly	2020	1-7	Coexistence+conditionalsupermixed/hybrid: First-past-the-post(FPTP/SMP) in single-member constituencies, party with over 50% of vote gets all seats in multi-member constituencies (party block voting), otherwise highest party gets half,rest distributed bylargest remainder(Hare quota)	180	(50%/100%)	electoral districts^{[citation needed]}
Chad	National Assembly	2011	?^{[citation needed]}	Coexistence+conditionalsupermixed/hybrid: First-past-the-post(FPTP/SMP)party with over 50% of vote gets all seats in multi-member constituencies(party block voting), otherwiseList PR(largest remainder, closed list)^[2]	188	(50%/100%)	electoral districts^{[citation needed]}
Djibouti	National Assembly	2018	3-28	Fusion/ majority jackpot (MBS): 80% of seats (rounded to the nearest integer) in each constituency are awarded to the party receiving the most votes (party block voting),remaining seats are allocated proportionally to other parties receiving over 10% (closed list,D'Hondt method)	65	80%	regions	Presidential system
Greece	Hellenic Parliament	2019		Majority bonus system (MBS)	?	?
San Marino	Grand and General Council	2019		Majority bonus system (MBS)	?	?

France[edit]

Thescrutin de liste(Fr.scrutin,voting byballot,andliste,a list) was, beforeWorld War I,asystem of electionof national representatives inFranceby which the electors of adepartmentvoted for a party-homogeneous slate of deputies to be elected to serve it nationally. It was distinguished from thescrutin d'arrondissement,also calledscrutin uninominal,under which the electors in eacharrondissementreturned one deputy.^[3]It has been abolished since, as to theFrench Parliament.

It is used ontwo-round basisto elect1⁄3of theregional councillors,and favours the largest party of that council's election.

Italy[edit]

InItaly,this system applies to1⁄5of theregional councillorssince 1995. As in the French version, its goal is to ensure that the assembly is controlled by the leading coalition of parties. There is one round of voting.

Singapore[edit]

In Singapore, the general ticket system, locally known as theparty block vote,elects by far most members of theParliament of Singaporefrommulti-member districtsknown asgroup representation constituencies(GRCs), on apluralitybasis. This operates in parallel to elections fromsingle-member districtandnominations.It is moderated by the inclusion of at least one person of a different race than the others in any "team" (which is not necessarily a party team) which is selected by voters.

United States[edit]

For an at-large one-party return, many states adopted ageneral ticket.The state voted for and returned an at-largedelegationto theHouse of Representatives.

Ticket voting is used to electElectoral Collegefor presidential elections, except for EC members in Maine and Nebraska, and Alaska (starting in 2024), where most of the EC members are elected byfirst-past-the-postin congressional districts.

Under ticket voting, votes for any non-overall winning party's candidates do not receive any representation by elected members.

In terms of paper practices, the systems used varied between issue of:

a single ballot, listing all candidates and party affiliations (by means ofbloc voting)
separate ballots for each seat

This was quite common until reserved to special use by the 1842Apportionment Billand locally implementing legislation which took effect after the 1845–47 Congress.^[4]Until the Congress ending in 1967 it took effect in rare instances, save for a two cases of ex-Confederate States– for one term – these had tiny delegations, were for top-up members to be at-large allocated pending redistricting, or were added to the union since the last census.

The following is a table of every instance of the use of the general ticket in theUnited States Congress.

Congress	Dates	State and number of representatives
1st	1789–1791	Connecticut (5), New Jersey (4), New Hampshire (3), Pennsylvania (8)
2nd	1791–1793	Connecticut (5), New Jersey (4), New Hampshire (3)
3rd	1793–1795	Connecticut (7), Georgia (2), New Jersey (5), New Hampshire (4), Pennsylvania (13), Rhode Island (2)
4thand5th	1795–1799	Connecticut (7), Georgia (2), New Jersey (5), New Hampshire (4), Rhode Island (2)
6th	1799–1801	Connecticut (7), Georgia (2), New Hampshire (4), Rhode Island (2)
7th	1801–1803	Connecticut (7), Georgia (2), New Jersey (5), New Hampshire (4), Rhode Island (2)
8th	1803–1805	Connecticut (7), Georgia (4), New Jersey (6), New Hampshire (5), Rhode Island (2), Tennessee (3)
9thto12th	1805–1813	Connecticut (7), Georgia (4), New Jersey (6), New Jersey (5), Rhode Island (2)
13th	1813–1815	Connecticut (7), Delaware (2), Georgia (6), New Hampshire (6), Rhode Island (2), Vermont (6)
14thto16th	1815–1821	Connecticut (7), Delaware (2), Georgia (6), New Jersey (6), New Hampshire (6), Rhode Island (2), Vermont (6)
17th	1821–1823	Connecticut (7), Delaware (2), Georgia (6), New Jersey (6), New Hampshire (6), Rhode Island (2)
18th	1823–1825	Connecticut (6), Georgia (7), New Jersey (6), New Hampshire (6), Rhode Island (2), Vermont (5)
19th	1825–1827	Connecticut (6), Georgia (7), New Jersey (6), New Hampshire (6), Rhode Island (2)
20th	1827–1829	Connecticut (6), New Jersey (6), New Hampshire (6), Rhode Island (2)
21stand22nd	1829–1833	Connecticut (6), Georgia (7), New Jersey (6), New Hampshire (6), Rhode Island (2)
23rdand24th	1833–1837	Connecticut (6), Georgia (9), Missouri (2), Mississippi (2), New Jersey (6), New Hampshire (5), Rhode Island (2)
25thand26th	1837–1841	New Hampshire (5), Georgia (9), Missouri (2), Mississippi (2), New Jersey (6), Rhode Island (2)
27th	1841–1843	Alabama (5), Georgia (9), Missouri (2), Mississippi (2), New Hampshire (5), New Jersey (6), Rhode Island (2)
28th	1843–1845	New Hampshire (4), Georgia (8), Missouri (5), Mississippi (4)
29th	1845–1847	Iowa (2), New Hampshire (4), Missouri (5), Mississippi (4)
30th	1847–1849	Wisconsin (2)
31stto34th	1849–1857	California (2)
35thto37th	1857–1863	California (2), Minnesota (2)
38thto42nd	1863–1873	California (3)
43rdto47th	1873–1883	Florida (2), Kansas (3)
48th	1883–1885	Maine (4)
51stand52nd	1889–1893	South Dakota (2)
53rdto57th	1893–1903	South Dakota (2), Washington (2)
58thto60th	1903–1909	North Dakota (2), South Dakota (2), Washington (3)
61st	1909–1911	North Dakota (2), South Dakota (2)
62nd	1911–1913	North Dakota (2), New Mexico (2), South Dakota (2)
63rd	1913–1915	Idaho (2), Montana (2), Utah (2)
64th	1915–1917	Idaho (2), Montana (2)
65thto72nd	1917–1933	Idaho (2), Montana (2)
73rd	1933–1935	Kentucky (9), Minnesota (9), Missouri (13), North Dakota (2), Virginia (9)
74thto77th	1935–1943	North Dakota (2)
78thto80th	1943–1949	Arizona (2), New Mexico (2), North Dakota (2)
81stto87th	1949–1963	New Mexico (2), North Dakota (2)
88th	1963–1965	Alabama (8), Hawaii (2), New Mexico (2)
89thand90th	1965–1969	Hawaii (2), New Mexico (2)
91st	1969–1971	Hawaii (2)

References[edit]

^The Australian Electoral System, p. 61
^"Le système électoral au Tchad - Comité de Suivi de l'Appel à la Paix et à la Réconciliation"(in French). 23 September 2015. Archived fromthe originalon 2015-09-23.Retrieved25 September2020.
^One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain:Chisholm, Hugh,ed. (1911). "Scrutin de Liste".Encyclopædia Britannica.Vol. 24 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 487.
^Public Law 90-196,2 U.S.C.§ 2c

Sources[edit]

Martis, Kenneth C. (1982).The Historical Atlas of United States Congressional Districts.New York: Macmillan Publishing Company.

External links[edit]

U.S. House of Representatives: House History

[1] The Australian Electoral System, p. 61

[2] "Le système électoral au Tchad - Comité de Suivi de l'Appel à la Paix et à la Réconciliation"(in French). 23 September 2015. Archived fromthe originalon 2015-09-23.Retrieved25 September2020.

[3] One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain:Chisholm, Hugh,ed. (1911). "Scrutin de Liste".Encyclopædia Britannica.Vol. 24 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 487.

[4] Public Law 90-196,2 U.S.C.§ 2c

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