THE ALTERNATIVE VOTE

Under the Alternative Vote system you vote by showing your preferences. This means putting each candidate in order - from the candidate who you most want to win as your 1st choice, to the candidate who you least want to win as your last choice.

You vote in this same way for both your communal seat constituency and your open seat constituency.

It is important to understand how this system works so that you know how your vote will be counted.

Under the Alternative Vote system a candidate only wins when he or she has got more than half of all the votes in that constituency.

In the first round of counting all of the 1st preference (1st choice) votes are counted. If one candidate has more than half of all the 1st preference votes. (i.e. if he or she is the first choice candidate of more than half of the voters) - then he or she is declared the winner straight away.

If no candidate gets more than half of the 1st preference votes, the least popular candidate, the one with the fewest 1st prefernce votes , is eliminated. This candidates’s ballot papers are then looked at again, and his or her votes are transferred to the candidates who are marked as the 2nd preference on each of these ballot papers. All of the votes are then counted again to see if any candidate now have enough to win.

If there is still no winner, then the candidate who now has the fewest votes is eliminated, and his or her votes are transferred to whichever candidate is next in the order of each voter’s preferences.

This process of eliminating one candidate and transferring their votes is repeated until one candidate has more than half of all the votes and wins.

This means that the order in which you choose to put the candidates is very important. Even if your 1st choice candidate loses, how you have listed your other preferences can still decide who wins.