Understanding Poll Books

[Nese]

Does anyone know why some people voted for 2 people and others only 1?  I'm using the 1868 Cricklade Poll Book and see that 2 members of the family voted for Cadogan while another 2 voted for both Goddard and Cadogan.  Were some people entitled to more votes, if so why and why didn't they vote twice for the the same person?

[Jebber]

If you owned property over a certain value gave you the entitlement to vote, some people owned more than one property in different places, this gave them a second vote.

[Gadget]

Also, there was the university vote. This from Wiki:

In the United Kingdom, up to 1950, people affiliated with a university were allowed a vote in both a university constituency and their home constituency, and property owners could vote both in the constituency where their property lay and that in which they lived, if the two were different. Therefore some university-educated property owners could vote in three different constituencies. After 1910, the Liberal Government was intent on passing a Plural Voting Bill that sought to prevent electors who appeared on the electoral register more than once from voting more than once. Liberal and Unionist Headquarters were in agreement that 29 seats were won by Unionists in December 1910 because of plural voting.[1] However, before the bill could pass through Parliament, the Great War started and the bill was shelved. These practices were finally abolished by the Representation of the People Act 1948, which first applied in the 1950 General Election.

A simple description of the history of voting in UK is given here:

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/citizenship/struggle_democracy/getting_vote.htm


Gadget

[Old Bristolian]

I should think this is more a case of multiple candidates for a seat that returned more than one representative. Otherwise you would surely vote twice for the same person. It could be that the ones who voted once only wanted the one candidate and didn't like the other choices.

[Nese]

The family in question were certainly not involved with any universities.  The individuals did own land, just one property each, so in their case at least I decided it might be that the seat could have more than one representative.  With that in mind I've found a list of UK constituencies for the time period and, indeed, Cricklade was entitled to two representatives.

Thanks for replies which have helped me solve this puzzle.