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.