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A plural district or multi-member district refers to an electoral district in the United States of America that send multiple individuals to represent the same district. Currently, these districts exist only at the level of state and local governments. They are currently against the law at the national level (but such laws can be amended or reversed).

Multi-member districts were used at different times to elect the United States House of Representatives, with alternating prohibitions and allowances enacted in history. The first federal (national) ban on multi-member districts for the House was by the 1842 Apportionment Bill. Currently, multi-member districts for the House are banned by the Uniform Congressional District Act. Multi-member districts that were used to elect members to the House reflected geographically defined districts. They did so on a single ballot where each voter had as many votes as seats being filled (block voting) or using distinct ballots, in separate concurrent contests for each seat (conducting separate plurality elections in the same district). Occasionally the general ticket election system was used.

Multi-member districts give more populous counties or established Congressional Districts fair representation without redistricting (specifically, dividing them).

Multi-member districts exist in other countries and bodies. Many countries that use proportional representation use multi-member districts or elect multiple members simultaneously using at-large districting. In such systems the district magnitude is critical for raising proportionality in election results.

Several states allow one district to elect more than one representative to the state legislature. Some states that use this districting appear below.^[1][2][3]

The states below always use multi-member districts.^[2]

• Arizona (two in each district)[1]
• New Jersey (two in each district)
• South Dakota (two in each district)
• Washington (two in each district).

Other states use districts of diverse district magnitude. The New Hampshire House of Representatives uses 1- to 10-member districts. Plurality block voting is used in the plural districts.

This is a table of every instance of the use of plural districts in the United States Congress until the first ban, which was enacted in 1842. Instances after are not included.

District magnitude varied from 2 to 4 in many cases.

Theory and principles

• Electoral district § District magnitude, the number of members per district

Compatible with

• Block voting, voter casts multiple votes in contest where multiple members are returned, on plurality basis
• First-past-the-post, a vote/ballot for one member to be returned, on a plurality basis
  • Multiple ballots, one per designated seat, using system above
• Proportional representation, any voting system that seeks to result in representation in proportion to the number of respective votes cast overall in an election, or in a multi-member district
• General ticket – the return of a single winning party or team of candidates in an electoral district. Voter casts one vote. multiple members elected.
• Representation at-large – a representative/territory being undivided for every purpose as to a representative body. The most-populous at large districts/regions elect multiple members (some states elect just one member).
• Multi-member districts
• State constitutions in the United States
• State legislatures
• State legislature (United States)
• List of United States state legislatures

• Martis, Kenneth C. (1982). The Historical Atlas of United States Congressional Districts. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company.

• U.S. House of Representatives: House History
• Criteria for state legislative districts article at Loyola University website.
• Multimember Districts' Effect on Collaboration between U.S. State Legislators, by Justin Kirkland, Legislative Studies Quarterly, Vol. 37, No. 3 (AUGUST 2012), pp. 329-353 (25 pages), Published By: Washington University