ELECTIONS to the House of Commons are currently held under the first-past-the-post system, where each voter marks their ballot with a single X.
The candidate with the highest number of votes wins – even if they don’t have majority support.
None of the Huddersfield area MPs took more than 50% at May’s general election: Dewsbury’s Simon Reevell won 35%; Colne Valley MP Jason McCartney took 37%; Barry Sheerman of Huddersfield won 38.8%; Calder Valley’s Craig Whittaker took 39.4% and Mike Wood of Batley and Spen won 41.5%.
On May 5, 2011 voters across the UK will be asked if they want to replace first-past-the-post with the alternative vote.
The system allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference.
A candidate who wins more than 50% of first preference votes is elected.
But if no-one gets a majority, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and voters’ second choices are allocated to remaining candidates.
The process continues until one candidate wins more than 50% of the vote.
