London Assembly elections
The voting system
The Additional Member System (a combination of first past the
post and closed list proportional representation).
Who am I voting
for?
You have two votes; one for your local constituency member and
one for the eleven London-wide Assembly members.
How to vote
Always read the instructions for filling in the ballot paper
carefully, even if you have voted before.
You will be given two ballot
papers.
The first is for your constituency
member. The ballot paper lists the name of each candidate along
with their party name, party logo and their address.
Simply put an X (a cross) next to the
one candidate that you wish to vote for.
The second ballot paper is a vote for
a party or independent candidate attempting to gain the eleven
London-wide Assembly seats. The ballot paper lists political
parties and independent candidates. Under each party name is a list
of candidates who wish to represent that party.
Simply put an X (a cross) next to the
party or independent candidate that you wish to vote for.
At the same time you will also be
asked to vote on a third ballot paper for a London Mayor (for more information see the section on Directly
Elected Mayors in England).
If you make a mistake then you can ask
the polling staff to give you another ballot paper.
You may also be voting in other
elections on the same day.
Who is elected?
There are 14 constituencies, each represented by one Assembly
member. In each constituency the candidate with the most votes is
elected; they do not need to get more than half of the votes cast.
If there is a tie then a candidate is selected by the drawing of
lots (i.e. a method of selection by chance such as tossing a coin
or picking a name out of a hat).
There are also 11 London-wide seats;
these seats are awarding using a quota system. The quota is the
total number of votes received by a party or independent candidate
divided by the number of seats already gained +1.
So, for a party with no seats the
number of votes received is divided by one, and so stays the same.
If the party already has one seat then its number of votes is
divided by two, if it has two seats it is dived by three, and so
on.
This means that the more seats you
have already won, the harder it is to gain extra seats, so the
overall allocation of seats is more proportional to the number of
votes received. The number of seats each party has includes any
constituency seats won and any London-wide seats already
awarded.
The first London-wide seat that a
party wins goes to the first person on its list, the second seat to
the second person, and so on, until the party has either not won
any more seats or has run out of names on its list. An independent
candidate is treated as though he or she were a party with only one
name on its list.