Next month’s Liverpool City Region mayoral election will be the first to use the first past the post voting system to elect the region’s metro mayor.
In the previous two votes for this position the supplementary vote system had been used. However, following the Elections Act 2022 the first past the post system is now used when voting at elections of elected mayors.
The supplementary vote system, which you may be familiar with from previous elections, allowed voters to select their first and second choice candidates.
In this system if no candidate achieves over 50% of the vote in the first round then the top two candidates go through to a second round where people’s first and second choice votes are counted for the two candidates.
In the new system voters will choose a single candidate on the ballot paper and the candidate with the most votes wins.
This change has bought the voting system used for mayoral elections in line with local government elections and general elections in England.
For the rest of Mersey News Live’s coverage of the upcoming election click here .
Reporting by George James.
