Limited voting (also known as partial block voting) is a voting system in which electors have fewer votes than there are positions available. The positions are awarded to the candidates who receive the most votes. In the special case in which the voter may vote for only one candidate and there are two or more posts, this system is called the single non-transferable vote or sometimes the strictly limited vote.

The town of Voterville makes up an electoral district. It elects three representatives to the legislature. The voter has only two votes. At the election, the ballot paper appears thus:

In this case the voter has voted for Brian and Beryl Blue. They cannot cast a third although there are three seats being contested. Each vote counts as one towards the total for the candidate voted for.

Limited Voting frequently enables minority groupings to gain representation – unlike first past the post or bloc voting systems.

For example, in Voterville 54% of electors support the Blue Party while 46% support the Red Party. The Blue Party would win all three seats with bloc voting and also under first past the post assuming an even distribution of support across the town, and the Red Party would win no representation.

With limited voting the Red Party would usually win one seat.

Assuming 20,000 electors in the town cast two votes each and the Blue party getting 54 percent of the votes and the Red party getting 46 percent, the results might be:

Thus two parties obtain representation.