Contents

Summary 5

1 Voting systems in use in the UK 7

1.1 First-past-the-post 7

1.2 Additional member system (AMS) 8

1.3 Single Transferable Vote (STV) 11

Counting using STV 11

STV in the UK 12

1.4 Alternative vote (AV) 13

1.5 Closed proportional list system 15

2 Recent developments 20

2.1 Supplementary voting (SV) 20

2.2 Local elections in Wales 22

3 Strengths and weaknesses of different systems 24

3.1 General principles 24

Proportionality 24

The constituency link 26

Simplicity 26

Outcomes and accountability 27

Voter choice 28

Parties versus individual candidates 29

4 Reviews of voting systems 31

4.1 Report of the Independent Commission on the Voting System (October 1998) 31

4.2 Kerley Report (June 2000) 32

4.3 Independent Commission to review Britain’s experience of Proportional Voting Systems in the UK (2003) 33

4.4 The Richard Commission (2004) 33

4.5 Arbuthnott Commission for Scotland (2006) 34

4.6 Review of Voting Systems: the experience of new voting systems in the United Kingdom since 1997 (2008) 36

4.7 British Academy Policy Centre (2010) 37

5 International comparisons 39

5.1 FPTP 39

5.2 List systems 39