SNTV is used for elections in
Puerto Rico,
Kuwait,
Indonesia,
Japan,
Taiwan,
Thailand,
Libya,
Iraq,
Hong Kong and
Vanuatu.
As a candidate-based method Puerto Rico In
Puerto Rico, SNTV is known as
at-large representation ("representación por acumulación" in Spanish), SNTV is used to elect the 11 at-large members in each of the House of Representatives and the Senate. Under
at-large representation, political parties vary the ballot order of their candidates across electoral divisions, in order to ensure each candidate has a roughly equal chance of success. Since most voters choose the candidates placed at the top of their party lists on their ballots, at-large candidates from the same party usually obtain approximately equal vote totals. When the party's candidates are equally supported, the most-popular party is often able to take six seats of the 11. The two major Puerto Rican political parties, the
Popular Democratic Party and the
New Progressive Party, usually each run six candidates for the 11 at-large members in each of the House of Representatives and the Senate, while the much smaller
Puerto Rican Independence Party runs a single-candidate slate for the at-large members in the Senate and the House of Representatives. The SNTV-elected members are a small part of the chambers compared to the members elected in the sixteen Senate districts, elected by block voting, and the forty House districts, elected by
first-past-the-post voting.
Japan, South Korea and Taiwan SNTV was once used to elect the legislatures of
Japan,
South Korea and the
Republic of China (
Taiwan), but its use has been discontinued for the most part. It is still used in Japan for some seats in the
House of Councillors (Sangi-in), prefectural assemblies and municipal assemblies. In Taiwan it is used for the six aboriginal seats in the
Legislative Yuan (national legislature), as well as local assemblies. The party structure there was complicated by the fact that while members of the
Legislative Yuan were elected by SNTV, executive positions were (and still are) elected by a
first past the post. This created a party system in which smaller factionalized parties, which SNTV promotes, have formed two large coalitions that resembles the
two party system which first past the post rewards. Starting with the
2008 legislative elections, SNTV was discarded in favor of a mixed
single member district (SMD) with proportional representation based on national party votes, similar to Japan. This system was a legacy of
its colonial rule inherited from the
Meiji Constitution.
Hong Kong From 1997 to 2016, the electoral system for up to
half of the seats of the
Legislative Council of the territory was nominally a
party-list proportional representation system with
Hare quota. In practice, political parties fielded multiple lists in the same constituency. For example, the
Democratic Party fielded three separate lists in the eight-seat New Territories West constituency in the
2008 election, aiming to win three seats (they won two). Split list or split tickets is done in order to win more seats with fewer votes, since the first candidate on each list would require less than the Hare quota to get a seat. Supporters are asked to split their votes among the lists of the same party, usually along geographical location of residence. In the
2012 and
2016 elections, no candidate list won more than one seat in any of the six PR constituencies which returned a total of 40 seats, rendering the result effectively the same as SNTV. In the
2021 Hong Kong electoral reform, the
Standing Committee of the National People's Congress instituted SNTV in its amendment to Annex 2 of the
Basic Law on 30 March 2021. 20 seats of the Legislative Council are returned by geographical constituencies (GC) through single non-transferable vote with a district magnitude of 2. Effect of the district size of 2 under SNTV system in Hong Kong have been compared to that of the
binomial voting system.
Libya In accordance with its
post-Gaddafi electoral law, Libya in 2012 elected 80 members of its 200-seat
General National Congress using single non-transferable vote. Some commentators cited the system as a factor in the subsequent return to
civil war in 2014.
Iraq Jordan SNTV was used in Jordan from 1993 to 2016. SNTV became the official electoral system for legislature elections in Jordan in 1993, the second election since the country's return to an elected parliament in 1989. The 1993 electoral reform introduced SNTV as the "one-man, one-vote", which was argued to be a more egalitarian alternative to the former "block vote" (or
Multiple non-transferable vote) where constituents could cast as many votes as there were seats in their constituency. (Under SNTV, each voter cast just one.) The Jordanian opposition parties were heavily critical of the voting reform as it significantly hurt their electoral results. The Islamic Action Front was at the forefront of this criticism, boycotting 4 of the 6 elections held under this system. The last election held purely under this system was in 2010, whose parliament was dissolved after the Arab Spring protests in Jordan and a new election was held in 2013 using both SNTV and a national closed list with a proportional system. SNTV was completely abolished after the 2016 electoral reform where it was replaced with
open list PR (in 23 constituencies of between three and nine seats each) plus 15 seats reserved for women.
Kuwait Kuwait has used SNTV to elect the members of its National Assembly (Majles al-Umma) in five 10-member districts, starting with the 2012 election.
Vanuatu Since independence from Britain and France in 1980,
Vanuatu has used SNTV to elect most of the members of its Parliament. Currently, other than eight members elected in single-member constituencies, the 52 members of Parliament are elected in ten multi-member constituencies (of between two and seven seats) by single non-transferable vote. The last election this was done was the
2025 Vanuatuan general election.
Chile uses elements of SNTV in its open-list PR system. ==See also==