How does the electoral system work in Scotland and Wales?
Voting for the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly is done through what is known as an additional member system. Some representatives are elected via the traditional first past the post method but voters get to cast a second vote for “top-up” seats, allocated in proportion to the number of votes. These representatives are selected on a regional basis from lists of candidates drawn up by each party – with five regions in Wales and eight in Scotland. What about Northern Ireland? In Northern Ireland local and Assembly elections (and Scottish local elections), voting is done on a single transferable vote basis which sees more than one candidate elected from a single constituency. Voters number candidates in order of preference and all those passing a defined threshold – calculated by dividing the number of valid votes by the number of seats plus one – are elected. Their surplus votes are distributed to other candidates on the basis of other preferences with low-scoring candidates being
