Voters in each ward will indicate their preference of first, second, etc candidates - although voters do not need to vote for more than one candidate if they don't wish to.  A quota and formulae system will then decide who is elected based on the preferences as indicated by the voters.

In an STV election, the quota is the number of votes a candidate needs to get elected. It is based on the total number of votes cast and the number of people needed to be elected to fill all the vacant positions.

The quota is calculated in the following manner:

- for example, in an election with four Councillors to be elected, where there were 4,000 valid votes, the quota would be:

 4000 (Votes)
_________________  + 1 = 801

(4 (Vacancies) + 1) 

So in this case the quota would be 801.

The counting concept for STV has been diagrammatically illustrated by the New Zealand Government - the basic idea of how the system works can be found by clicking here. An animated version can also be found here

It is also proposed that in view of the complexity of an STV count, the votes will be counted electronically

Grateful thanks to my candidate colleague Maxine Smith in Cromarty Firth ward for the content of this page