Going to the polls is not as complicated as you may think

Political Reporter Guto Thomas explains how the voting system works for the Welsh Assembly elections on 1 May

Voting in these elections is not as complicated as it may appear.

In simple terms, we are all entitled to two votes. You get two ballot papers and you vote once for your constituency candidate, and once for a party on the regional list system.

You can choose to vote once, twice - or, of course, not at all.

You can choose to vote twice for candidates from the same party. Or you can decide to vote for different parties.

And that's all there is to it... at first sight, at least.

But the outcome is very different to the traditional Westminster system.

Real world

There are 40 AMs elected under the traditional first-past-the-post system. Whichever constituency candidate gets the most votes goes to Cardiff Bay.

But the remaining 20 AMs are elected via the regional lists - and that's where things start to get more complex.

How North Wales voted in '99 Con: 19% - 2 list AMs Lab: 34% - 6 constituency AMs Lib Dem: 10% - 1 list AM Plaid Cymru: 32% - 3 constituency AMs, 1 list AM

So what does this mean in the real world?

North Wales, for example, has nine constituency seats. In 1999 Labour won six, Plaid Cymru the other three.

The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats missed out altogether, even though almost 20% of voters in North Wales backed the Tories, and 10% the Liberal Democrats.

This is where the second vote comes into play.

It is via this route that Plaid Cymru, the Conservatives and the Lib Dems got a share of the four regional seats, according to how many constituency seats and regional votes they won. The Tories took two list seats, and the Lib Dems and Plaid one each.