*** Welcome to piglix ***

Plurality at large voting


Plurality-at-large voting, also known as block vote or multiple non-transferable vote (MNTV), is a non-proportional voting system for electing several representatives from a single multimember electoral district using a series of check boxes and tallying votes similar to a plurality election. Although multiple winners are elected simultaneously, block voting is not a system for obtaining proportional representation; instead, the usual result is that the largest single group wins every seat by electing a slate of candidates, resulting in a landslide.

Even if the term "at-large" describes elections for representative members of a governing body who are elected or appointed to represent the whole membership of the body, this system can be used by a country divided in some multi-member electoral districts, but in this last case the system is commonly referred to as block voting or the bloc vote.

This system is usually based on a single round of vote, but it can sometimes appear in a runoff (two-round) version, as in some local elections in France, where candidates who do not receive an absolute majority must compete in a second round. Here it can be better called as majority-at-large voting.

The term bloc voting sometimes means simple plurality election in multimember districts. In such a system, each party introduces a list of candidates and the party winning a plurality of votes wins all the seats. In contrast to such a system, the system described in this article can be called unlimited voting (contrary to limited voting, in which a voter has fewer votes than the number of seats contested).

In a block voting election, all candidates run against each other for m number of positions, where m is commonly called the district magnitude. Each voter selects up to m candidates on the ballot (voters are sometimes said to have m votes; however, they are unable to vote for the same candidate more than once as is permitted in cumulative voting). Voters are most commonly permitted to cast their votes across more than one party list. The m candidates with the most votes (who may or may not obtain a majority of available votes) are the winners and will fill the positions.


...
Wikipedia

...