Recommended by the Jenkins Commission in 1998, but not in use anywhere in the world.
The Alternative Vote Plus (AV+) proposal was for a parliament where 80-85% of MPs are elected via the Alternative Vote, and 15-20% are top up MPs via Party Lists.
At the polling station, you are given two ballot papers*. On the first is a list of candidates standing to be your local MP, on this paper you put numbers besides as many or as few candidates as you want, with 1 being your favourite.
With the second ballot paper, you elect MPs to represent your county or metropolitan area more broadly. On the ballot paper is a list of parties and the candidates they are supporting. You can either put a cross by your favourite party, or choose your favourite candidate.
The constituency MPs are elected with the Alternative Vote electoral system.
If more than half the voters have the same favourite candidate, that person becomes the MP. If nobody gets half, the numbers provide instructions for what happens next.
The counters remove whoever came last and look at the ballot papers with that candidate as their favourite. Rather than throwing away these votes, they move each vote to the voter’s second favourite candidate. This process is repeated until one candidate has half of the votes and becomes the MP.
The second ballot papers are then counted. The people counting look at how many constituency seats each party won in the county or metropolitan area. They then add ‘top-up’ members from the party lists to make the group of MPs more closely match how the area voted on the second ballot paper.
So, if a party has 5 MPs from the constituencies and its fair share is 6 MPs then 1 candidate from its list become an MP. Where a party has more than one candidate on the second ballot, the one that is elected is the one that got the most votes personally.
*The Jenkins report suggested a single ballot paper split in two columns, but this would no longer be best practice due to the risks of confusion.
With 80% to 85% of seats elected via the Alternative Vote, there aren't enough top-up seats to make it proportional Electoral Reform Society
With 80% to 85% of seats elected via the Alternative Vote, there aren't enough top-up seats to make it proportional
In the arrangement suggested by the Jenkins Report, it does not have enough top-up members to make the end result proportional.
A typical county might elect 6 constituency MPs and a single county wide top-up MP. AV+ is designed around Labour and the Conservatives splitting all constituency seats between them, and one of the minor parties picking up the single top-up seat.