Introduction Part 2 – Voting System at Senedd General Elections and Allocation of Seats Section 8 - General elections
17.Section 8 substitutes sections 6 to 9 of the 2006 Act to give effect to the new electoral system. The references below are to the sections of the 2006 Act as substituted.
18.Section 6 of the 2006 Act, as substituted, provides that persons voting in Senedd general elections may cast one vote only - either for a registered political party that has submitted a list of candidates for that constituency, or for a candidate standing independently of a party in that constituency (called an “individual candidate” in the 2006 Act). In consequence of the change from the mixed member proportional system originally provided for under the 2006 Act to the closed list proportional system provided for in these provisions, all Members will be elected in the same way and voters will have only one vote (rather than two). This section also requires that an order made under section 13 of the 2006 Act about the conduct of elections of Members of the Senedd must require that the names of all validly nominated candidates for the constituency are included on the ballot paper.
19.Section 7 of the 2006 Act, as substituted, makes provision about lists of candidates standing at a Senedd general election, submitted by registered political parties. A list must contain between 1 and 8 candidates. The list must not include a person who is included on any other list (whether in the same constituency or another), or who is standing as an individual candidate (again, whether in the same constituency or another). Similarly, a person may not be an individual candidate if they also appear on any party list, or as an individual candidate in any other constituency. The result is that a person may only stand once as a candidate at a general election. The section also defines “constituency returning officer.”
20.Substituted sections 8 and 9 set out the method for allocating seats, which involves applying the d’Hondt method.
21.Substituted section 8 of the 2006 Act provides for the calculation of the “seat allocation figure”. Seats are to be allocated in turn to the party or individual candidate with the highest seat allocation figure (substituted section 9(1) and (2)).
22.For an individual candidate, the seat allocation figure is the total number of votes received by that candidate. For a party standing in a constituency, it is the total number of votes received by the party in that constituency, divided by the “seat allocation divisor”. Initially the seat allocation divisor is one, meaning that the first seat allocation figure for a party is the total number of votes it has received in the constituency.
23.Therefore the first of the 6 seats for the constituency is allocated to the party or individual candidate that received the most votes.
24.Substituted section 9 of the 2006 Act provides for the recalculation of a party’s seat allocation figure with an increased divisor when allocating the second to sixth seats if the party was allocated the previous seat. So, to allocate the second seat, if the first seat was allocated to a party, that party’s seat allocation figure must be recalculated by adding one to its previous seat allocation divisor (i.e. the divisor becomes 2). The second seat is then allocated to the party or individual candidate with the highest seat allocation figure. For example, if Party A had won 50,000 votes in a constituency, and this was enough for the first seat to be allocated to Party A, then when allocating the second seat, the 50,000 would be divided by 1+1=2, giving a seat allocation figure for Party A of 25,000.
25.This process is then carried out again for the remaining seats, with a recalculation taking place each time a party was allocated the previous seat. So, taking the example above, if 25,000 was the highest seat allocation figure when allocating the third seat, it would be allocated to Party A and its seat allocation figure, when allocating the fourth seat, would be 50,000 divided by 3 (previous seat allocation divisor of 2 + 1), giving a seat allocation figure of 16,666.666 (recurring). Party A will be allocated the fourth seat if the other parties and any individual candidates all have lower seat allocation figures (the figures are not rounded off) or if they are to be disregarded in that round (see next paragraph).
26.Any individual candidate to whom a seat has been allocated is disregarded in any subsequent rounds. Similarly, if a party is allocated seats for all the candidates on its list, that party is disregarded in any subsequent rounds.
27.A party must fill the seats that it is allocated with the candidates that appear on its list in the order in which they appear on that list.
28.In the event of a tie in any round in the seat allocation figure for two or more parties or individual candidates, a seat is to be allocated to each of those parties or candidates provided there are enough remaining seats. If there are insufficient seats remaining, then the tie is to be broken as follows:
	the seat allocation figure for the tied parties or individual candidates is recalculated by adding one to the total number of votes that they received. For an individual candidate, this simply involves adding one to the number of votes the candidate received. For a party, this involves adding one to the total number of votes the party received in the constituency and then dividing that number by the party’s seat allocation divisor. For example, if a party had received 50,000 votes in the constituency and had so far been allocated two seats, 50,001 would be divided by the party’s seat allocation divisor of 3, to get 16,667;
	if the revised seat allocation figure breaks the tie, then the remaining seat is (or seats are) allocated in the usual way, namely to the party or individual candidate with the highest seat allocation figure.
29.If a tie remains, then the constituency returning officer must resolve it by lots.