European Elections: It's polling day and time to vote for your chosen party/candidate

Polling stations across the Isle of Wight are now open (7am-10pm) and ready for those who are registered to vote in the European Elections.

The election is being held for 73 seats in the European Parliament across 12 regions in the UK, with ten seats available in the South East region.

In our region there are 85 candidates standing across nine political parties, including three Independents.

The count on the Isle of Wight takes place on Sunday, so it’s unlikely we’ll know the outcome for the region until late Sunday night/early Monday morning.

Where is my closest polling station?
The very clever folks over the the Democracy Club have created a system for finding out where your nearest polling station is. Simply enter your postcode below.

How voting works
In this elections you vote for the party, rather than the candidate. Seats are awarded under the D’Hondt system.

What is the D'Hondt system?

The voting system was devised by a Belgian lawyer and mathematician active in the 19th Century called Victor D’Hondt.

According to the BBC, it works like this:

In the first round of counting the party with the most votes wins a seat for the candidate at the top of its list
In the second round the winning party’s vote is divided by two, and whichever party comes out on top in the re-ordered results wins a seat for their top candidate
The process repeats itself, with the original vote of the winning party in each round being divided by one plus their running total of MEPs, until all the seats for the region have been taken

Depending on how many votes each party receives, the candidates will be selected based on the position they are on the list.

Image: bagelmouse under CC BY 2.0