The general ticket, also known as party block voting (PBV) or ticket voting,[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. Unless specifically altered, this electoral system (at-large voting) 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, but the strongest party nationally still typically wins with a landslide.
This system is largely seen as outdated and undemocratic due to its extreme majoritarian results, and has mostly been replaced by party-list proportional (allowing fair representation to all parties) or first-past-the-post voting (allowing voters to vote for individual candidates in single-member districts). Similarly to first-past-the post and other non-proportional district based methods it is highly vulnerable to gerrymandering and majority reversal (when the party getting the most votes does not win the most seats). An example for the latter is the US Electoral College, the members of which are (overwhelmingly) elected using the general ticket.
In modern party-list systems, a full or partial return by the party-list proportional system is common. The partial return is referred to as a majority bonus or majority jackpot system, 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 region at-large.
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.
Countries using only party block voting or party block voting (in multi-member districts) mixed with a single-winner methods in single-member districts.
| Country | Legislative body | Latest election (year) | (Seats per
constituency) |
Electoral system | Total seats | Constituencies | Governmental system | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast)
|
National Assembly | 2021 | First-past-the-post (FPTP/SMP) in single-member districts and party 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) and party block voting (PBV/General ticket)[citation needed] | 59 | electoral districts[citation needed] | Semi-presidential system | ||
 Singapore
|
Parliament | 2020 | First-past-the-post (FPTP/SMP) and party block voting (PBV) | 104 (93 directly elected) | |||||
 United States
|
Electoral College
|
2020 | 1-54 | The electors of the Electoral College (who have opportunity to elect the President of the United States) are elected by General ticket in 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. | |
Countries using party block voting as part of a mixed system (combined with proportional representation)
| Country | Legislative body | Latest election (year) | (Seats per
constituency) |
Electoral system | Total seats | Share of seats elected by PBV | Constituencies | Governmental system | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Andorra
|
General Council | 2019 | 2 (local districts) / 14 (nationwide constituency) | Parallel voting / superposition (MMM):
Party block voting (PBV) locally + list PR nationwide |
28 | 50% | 7 parishes,
1 nationwide constituency |
Parliamentary system | ||
 Cameroon
|
National Assembly | 2020 | 1-7 | Coexistence+conditional supermixed/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 by largest remainder (Hare quota) |
180 | (50%/100%) | electoral districts[citation needed] | |||
 Chad
|
National Assembly | 2011 | ?[citation needed] | Coexistence+conditional supermixed/hybrid:
First-past-the-post (FPTP/SMP) party with over 50% of vote gets all seats in multi-member constituencies (party block voting), otherwise List 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) | ? | ? | |||||
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] It has been abolished since, as to the French Parliament.
It is used on two-round basis to elect 1⁄3 of the regional councillors, and favours the largest party of that council's election.
InItaly, 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.
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.
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For an at-large one-party return, many states adopted a general ticket. The state voted for and returned an at-large delegation to the House of Representatives.
Ticket voting is used to elect Electoral College for presidential elections, except for EC members in Maine and Nebraska, and Alaska (starting in 2024), 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.
| 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) |
| 4th and 5th | 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) |
| 21st and 22nd | 1829–1833 | Connecticut (6), Georgia (7), New Jersey (6), New Hampshire (6), Rhode Island (2) |
| 23rd and 24th | 1833–1837 | Connecticut (6), Georgia (9), Missouri (2), Mississippi (2), New Jersey (6), New Hampshire (5), Rhode Island (2) |
| 25th and 26th | 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) |
| 51st and 52nd | 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) |
| 89th and 90th | 1965–1969 | Hawaii (2), New Mexico (2) |
| 91st | 1969–1971 | Hawaii (2) |
One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Scrutin de Liste". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 24 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 487.
