National Assembly for Wales 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; the first vote is for a constituency member and the second vote is for regional members. Each constituency in Wales is represented by one Assembly Member (AM) and each region is represented by four AMs.

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 AM.

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 individual candidate attempting to gain the four regional seats within your region in Wales. The ballot paper lists political parties and individual candidates.

Simply put an X (a cross) next to the party or independent candidate that you wish to vote for.

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 40 constituencies, each represented by one AM. 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 five regions, each electing four regional AMs. There are therefore 20 regional seats; these seats are awarding using a quota system. The quota is the total number of regional votes received by a party or independent candidate divided by the number of constituency seats already gained in that region +1.

So, for a party with no constituency seats the number of votes received is divided by one. If the party has secured one constituency seat in that region then its number of votes is divided by two, if it has two seats in that region it is dived by three, and so on.

This means that the more constituency seats a political party has won, the harder it is to gain any additional seats through the regional list system, so the overall allocation of seats is more proportional to the number of votes received.

The regional seats each political party wins are filled by the candidates in the order they appear on the regional ballot paper, this order is decided by the political party. An independent candidate is treated as though he or she were a party with only one name on its list.