Porirua uses the Single Transferable Voting (STV) method for local elections for the Mayor and Councillor positions. This is a preference-based ranking system for candidates.
The votes are called ‘transferable’ because the votes can transfer between candidates (based on their ranking) to ensure a vote contributes to the election of at least one candidate the voter likes.
If a candidate for Councillor is a clear winner for the position and does not need all the votes they receive, a proportion is transferred to the voter’s next preference. This ensures all votes contribute to candidates. This works the same if a candidate is not popular and receives too few votes, those votes are transferred to a voter’s next preference.
