The general ticket, also known as party block voting (PBV),[1] is a type of block voting in which voters opt for a party, or a team's set list of candidates, and the highest-polling party/team becomes the winner. The system results in the victorious political party receiving 100% 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.
This system is largely seen as outdated and undemocratic due to its extreme winner-take-all nature, and has mostly been replaced by methods based on proportional representation or single-member districts. When used together with multi-member geographic districts, it is highly vulnerable to gerrymandering and majority reversals. An example of the latter can be seen in the US Electoral College, where all but four members are elected using the general ticket.
The system is occasionally used in superposition with party-list proportional representation, in which case the combined method is called a majority bonus system. The system is used in Italy for one-fifth of their regional councillors.
At the national level it was used for as many as seven of the states, for any given regularly convened US Congress, in the US House of Representatives before 1967 but mainly before 1847; and in France, in the pre-World War I decades of the Third Republic which began in 1870. It is in use in the Parliament of Singapore as 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.[citation needed]
The following countries use party block voting in coexistence with other systems in different districts.[citation needed]
Countries using party block voting in parallel with proportional representation.[citation needed]
The scrutin de liste (Fr. scrutin, voting by ballot, and liste, a list) was, before World War I, a system of election of national representatives in France by which the electors of a department voted for a party-homogeneous slate of deputies to be elected to serve it nationally. It was distinguished from the scrutin d'arrondissement, also called scrutin uninominal, under which the electors in each arrondissement returned one deputy.[3]
In Italy, this system applies to 1⁄5 of the regional councillors since 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.[citation needed]
In Singapore, the general ticket system, locally known as the party block vote, elects by far most members of the Parliament of Singapore from multi-member districts known as group representation constituencies (GRCs), on a plurality basis. This operates in parallel to elections from single-member district and nominations. 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.
Ticket voting is used to elect Electoral College for presidential elections, except for electors in Maine and Nebraska, where most of the EC members are elected by first-past-the-post in 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:
This was quite common until reserved to special use by the 1842 Apportionment Bill and 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 the United States Congress.
