Alternative Vote Plus

Recommended by the Jenkins Commission in 1998, the Alternative Vote Plus (AV+) system has not been used anywhere in the world.

Alternative Vote Plus AV+

The Alternative Vote Plus (AV+) system uses a mix of seats, some elected via the Alternative Vote and some via a Party List.

How to Vote

Voters vote once with the Alternative Vote (in which voters rank candidates in order of preference) to elect a candidate in each constituency, and vote again on a small top-up list to make the overall result more proportional.

With the top-up list, voters can either select their favourite party or choose their favourite candidate from the top-up list and the votes are then allocated to represent each party’s share of the votes proportionally

How it is counted

The Jenkins report recommended that 80% to 85% of seats in Parliament would be elected using the Alternative Vote electoral system. The remaining seats would be filled using ‘open’ party lists for each county or metropolitan area. The Commission recommends that the top-up members should be allocated correctively, that is on the basis of the second vote and taking into account the number of constituency seats gained by each party in each respective area.

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