Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs) are elected using the Additional Member voting system.
MSPs are normally elected every four or five years but by-elections can happen at any time.
When you vote in a Scottish Parliament election, you cast two votes. You will be given two ballot papers and you cast one vote on each paper.
You don’t have to vote for the same political party for both votes, but you can if you want to.
The first ballot paper will have a list of names and political parties – these are your candidates. Choose one candidate by marking ‘X’ next to your choice. The candidate who receives more votes than any other candidate will be the winner. The winning candidate becomes a Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) and will represent your constituency.
Then you cast a second vote. This ballot paper will have a list of political parties and independent candidates as your options. You show your choice of political party or independent candidate by marking an ‘X’ next to your choice. There are seven regional members for each of the eight electoral regions in Scotland.
The formula used to calculate the results of regional seats is complicated, even for people who run elections.
To work out how many regional positions, or ‘seats’, each party wins, the number of votes each party gets in the regional ballot is divided by the total number of seats (constituency and regional) already allocated in that region, plus one.
One is added so that parties which have not won any constituencies can be included in the calculation for the regional seats.
After this calculation, the party that ends up with the highest result wins the first regional seat. To work out which parties win the remaining seats this calculation is done again, but each time any additional seats that won are added in. As there are seven seats per region, this is done seven times. It can sometimes take a while to get the full results.
The regional seats each political party wins are filled by the candidates in the order they appear on the regional ballot paper. This order is decided by the political party.
It’s important to remember that you don’t directly elect the First Minister. They are chosen by MSPs. Usually, the First Minister is the leader of the political party with the most seats, but in theory, anyone can be nominated.
