A new voting system called the “Single Transferable Vote” (STV) is being introduced at the next Local Election, scheduled for Thursday 3rd May 2007 – to be held on the same day as the Scottish Parliamentary Elections.
Voters in each ward will indicate their preference of first, second, etc candidates. A quota and formulae system will then decide who is elected based on the preferences as indicated by the voters.
In an STV election, the quota is the number of votes a candidate needs to get elected. It is based on the total number of votes cast and the number of people needed to be elected to fill all the vacant positions.
The quota is calculated in the following manner:
- for example, in an election with three Councillors to be elected, where there were 4,000 valid votes, the quota would be:
4000 (Votes)
_________________ + 1 = 1001
(3 (Vacancies) + 1)
So in this case the quota would be 1001.
The counting concept for STV has been diagrammatically illustrated by the New Zealand Government - the basic idea of how the system works can be found by clicking here.