Plurality block voting

[2] The term plurality at-large is in common usage in elections for representative members of a body who are elected or appointed to represent the whole membership of the body (for example, a city, state or province, nation, club or association).

In a block voting election, all candidates run against each other for m number of positions, where m is commonly called the district magnitude.

The block voting system has a number of features which can make it unrepresentative of the voters' intentions.

Block voting regularly produces complete landslide majorities for the group of candidates with the highest level of support.

While many criticize block voting's tendency to create landslide victories, some cite it as a strength.

This system sometimes fosters the creation of an electoral alliance between political parties or groups as opposed to a coalition.

This has been the case in the National Assembly of Mauritius; the New Hampshire House of Representatives, with the election of multiple Free State Project as well as New Hampshire Liberty Alliance members; and in the Vermont Senate, with the elections of Vermont Progressive Party members Tim Ashe and Anthony Pollina.

[5] Historically, similar situations arose within the multi-member constituencies in the Parliament of the United Kingdom.

A slate of clones of the top preferred candidate will win every seat under both systems, however in preferential block voting this is instead the instant-runoff winner.

In Brazil, where Senatorial elections alternate between FPTP and block voting, each main candidate is registered along with two substitutes.

Votes in either election are cast and counted based on these three-candidate slates; when a Senator leaves office before their eight-year term ends, the first substitute takes their place, and then the second if needed.

(The usual one-party sweep produced by block voting is seen in Hebron in the 2006 election where one party took all the district's nine seats.

)[13] A form of block plurality voting was used for the elections of both houses of Parliament in Belgium before proportional representation was implemented in 1900.

48 Representatives are elected from districts with 1–3 members, the representatives are required to achieve at least 28% of the vote in a district to be elected, if there are unfilled seats after the first round of voting, a second round similar to the Belgian system is held to fill the remaining seat.

The remaining representatives are elected separately using party list proportional representation on the national level.