Our Voting System - STV Explained
You will be asked to rank the candidates in order of preference (i.e. your 1st choice, 2nd choice, 3rd choice and so on).
If you wish, you can just select your 1st choice for any of the ballots and leave it at that, however by ranking your preferences for all of the candidates, you are giving your 'next favourite' options a better chance of winning if your preferred candidate is eliminated.
It works as follows:
- At the time of polls closing, all of the ballots are counted up and allocated to each candidate according the 1st preference votes indicated.
- If at this stage none of the candidates have managed to gain more than 50% of the total votes cast, the candidate with the least votes at this stage is eliminated. Everyone who voted for the eliminated candidate then has their votes re-allocated to their next indicated preference.
- This process is repeated until a candidate has either achieved the required quota of 50% of the total votes plus one, or if there are only two candidates remaining in which case the candidate with the highest number of votes will be elected.
In ballots where there are several candidates, it is highly likely that 2nd and 3rd preferences will have a major impact on determining the eventual winner.
To see more details view the NUS Video below that explains how STV (sometimes called ATV) works