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A single-member district is an
electoral district An electoral district, also known as an election district, legislative district, voting district, constituency, riding, ward, division, or (election) precinct is a subdivision of a larger state (a country, administrative region, or other polity ...
represented by a single officeholder. It contrasts with a multi-member district, which is represented by multiple officeholders. Single-member districts are also sometimes called single-winner voting, winner-takes-all, or single-member constituencies. A number of electoral systems use single-member districts, including plurality voting (first-past-the-post), two-round systems,
instant-runoff voting Instant-runoff voting (IRV) is a type of ranked preferential voting method. It uses a majority voting rule in single-winner elections where there are more than two candidates. It is commonly referred to as ranked-choice voting (RCV) in the Un ...
(IRV),
approval voting Approval voting is an electoral system in which voters can select many candidates instead of selecting only one candidate. Description Approval voting ballots show a list of the options of candidates running. Approval voting lets each voter i ...
,
range voting Score voting or range voting is an electoral system for single-seat elections, in which voters give each candidate a score, the scores are added (or averaged), and the candidate with the highest total is elected. It has been described by various ...
, Borda count, and Condorcet methods (such as the Minimax Condorcet, Schulze method, and Ranked Pairs). Of these, plurality and runoff voting are the most common. In some countries, such as
Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...
and India, members of the lower house of parliament are elected from single-member districts; and members of the upper house are elected from multi-member districts. In some other countries like Singapore, members of parliament can be elected from both single-member districts as well as multi-member districts.


History in the United States

The
United States Constitution The Constitution of the United States is the Supremacy Clause, supreme law of the United States, United States of America. It superseded the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution, in 1789. Originally comprising seven ar ...
, ratified in 1789, states:
The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States...Representatives...shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers.
In other words, the Constitution specifies that each state will be apportioned a number of representatives in the House of Representatives proportional to its population. It does not, however, specify ''how'' those representatives should be apportioned. In the early years of the United States, a form of multi-member districts called
plural district The plural (sometimes list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated pl., pl, or ), in many languages, is one of the values of the grammatical number, grammatical category of number. The plural of a noun typically denotes a quantity greater than the ...
s were the norm. In contrast with modern
proportional Proportionality, proportion or proportional may refer to: Mathematics * Proportionality (mathematics), the property of two variables being in a multiplicative relation to a constant * Ratio, of one quantity to another, especially of a part compare ...
multi-member districts (which had not yet been invented), plural districts were elected at-large in plurality votes. By 1842, single-member House districts had become the norm, with twenty-two states using single-member districts and only six using at-large multi-member districts. On Dec 14, 1967, single-member House districts were mandated by law pursuant to the Uniform Congressional District Act ( 2 U.S. Code ยง2c), under the justification that they served as bulwarks against southern Democrats diluting the electoral power of African Americans by using strategically drawn at-large multi-member districts (Southern Democrats could, for instance, create a single statewide multi-member district elected by plurality vote, all but guaranteeing the white majority would elect only Democrats).


Aspects


Constituency link

It has been argued by proponents of single-member constituencies that it encourages a stronger connection between the representative and constituents and increases accountability and is a check on incompetence and corruption. In countries that have multi-member constituencies, it is argued that the constituency link is lost. For example, in Israel the whole country is a single constituency and representatives are selected by party-lists. On the other hand, today most voters tend to vote for a candidate because they are endorsed by a particular political party or because they are in favor of who would become or remain the leader of the government, more than their feelings for or against the actual candidate standing. Sometimes voters are in favor of a political party but do not like specific candidates. For example, voters in Canada re-elected the Alberta government in 1989 but, because of dissatisfaction with its leadership, the premier and leader of the governing party, Don Getty, lost his seat.


Fewer minority parties

It has been argued that single-member districts tend to promote two-party systems (with some regional parties). Called Duverger's law, this principle has also been empirically supported by the cube rule, which shows how the winning party in a first-past-the-post system is mathematically over-represented in the legislature. For example, in the
2014 United States House of Representatives elections The 2014 United States House of Representatives elections were held on November 4, 2014, in the middle of President Barack Obama's second term in office. Elections were held for all 435 seats of the House of Representatives, representing the 50 s ...
, the
Republican Party Republican Party is a name used by many political parties around the world, though the term most commonly refers to the United States' Republican Party. Republican Party may also refer to: Africa *Republican Party (Liberia) * Republican Part ...
won 51.2% of the popular vote but 56.7% of the seats. Supporters view this effect as beneficial, claiming that two-party systems are more stable, and that the minority opposition does not have undue power to break a coalition. First-past-the-post minimizes the influence of third parties and thus arguably keeps out forms of opposition outside of the dominant rival party. Critics of two-party systems believe that two-party systems offer less choice to voters, create an exaggerated emphasis on issues that dominate more marginal seats, and does not completely remove the possibility of a balanced chamber (or hung parliament), which can also give undue power to independents and lead to more, not less, stability.


Safe seats

A safe seat is one in which a plurality or majority of voters, depending on the electoral system, support a particular candidate or party so strongly that the candidate's election is practically guaranteed in advance of the vote. This means votes for other candidates effectively make no difference to the result. This results in feelings of disenfranchisement, as well as increased nonparticipation, by both supporters of the dominant candidate (who can confidently abstain from voting because their preferred candidate's victory is nearly assured) as well as supporters of other candidates (who know their preferred candidate is essentially guaranteed to lose).


Gerrymandering

Single-member districts enable gerrymandering, the practice of manipulating district boundaries to favor one political party. Whereas proportional multi-member districts ensure that political parties are represented roughly in proportion to the share of the vote they receive, in single-member districts the entire district is represented by a single politician, even if a sizeable minority (or even a majority, in the case of plurality voting) of the electorate votes for candidates from other parties. This enables political parties to rig elections in their favor by drawing districts in such a way that more districts are won by their party than their proportion of the overall vote would dictate (in the 2018 Wisconsin State Assembly election, for example, the
Republican Party Republican Party is a name used by many political parties around the world, though the term most commonly refers to the United States' Republican Party. Republican Party may also refer to: Africa *Republican Party (Liberia) * Republican Part ...
won 45% of the popular vote but 64% of the seats, due in part to gerrymandering).


Comparison of single-member district election methods


See also

* Duverger's law


References

{{Authority control Constituencies