Voting

Nominations for seats on the Law Society Council were encouraged from all eligible solicitors, irrespective of gender, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation or disability.

The elections are conducted in accordance with the Law Society bye-laws (PDF 475 kb) .

For geographical constituencies, nominations were invited from solicitors who have a registered address, or who are members of a local law society, in the relevant constituency. Candidates must be nominated by two other Law Society members with a registered address in the constituency.

For non-geographical constituencies, nominations were invited from solicitors who fall within the category of solicitors referred to in the seat designation or who practise in the relevant area of law. Candidates must be nominated by two other Law Society members qualified on the same basis.

More about constituencies

Voting deadline 

Votes in the ten contested elections for Council member seats must have been received by 17:00 on Thursday 20 June 2013 in order to be counted. If you have a vote, please take the opportunity to use it.

If you believe you should have received a ballot paper but have not done so, please contact councilelections@lawsociety.org.uk, including your SRA number and your current address. Queries must be sent to us by 17:00 on Thursday 13 June in order to be processed in time. We cannot respond to requests after Friday 14 June.

How to vote

The ballot paper lists the names of the candidates for each contested seat.

Where there are only two candidates for one seat, you vote by putting an X against the name of your preferred candidate.

Where there are more than two candidates, you vote by putting a ‘1’ next to the name of your most favoured candidate, a ‘2’ next to the name of your next favoured candidate and so on. You do not need to vote for all of the candidates: you can stop allocating preferences when you cannot decide between the remaining candidates.

At the count, the process varies slightly depending on whether there is only one seat to be filled, or more than one.

If the vote for any one candidate equals or exceeds the votes of all other candidates combined, that candidate is elected. If not, the candidates with the fewest votes are excluded and their votes transferred to their next available preferences. This process continues until the vote for one candidate exceeds or equals the votes for all the others, and that candidate is declared elected.

Where there is more than one seat to be filled, the number of votes which candidates need in order to be elected (the ‘quota’) is calculated by counting the number of valid ballot papers, and dividing the total by the number of people to be elected plus one. For example, with 100 valid ballot papers and three places to be filled, the quota would be 25.

The ballot papers are sorted into piles according to their first preference. If any candidate has more first preference votes than the quota, they are immediately elected.

The next stage is to transfer any surplus votes for these elected candidates - that is, the difference between their vote and the quota needed to be elected. To avoid the problem of deciding which of the votes are surplus, all ballot papers are transferred but at a reduced value so that the total adds up to the number of surplus votes.

We don’t necessarily transfer all the surplus straight away. It depends on the number of votes: if the total surplus available is big enough to change the order of the last placed candidate then we start to transfer it. If not then last placed candidate is excluded and their votes are transferred.

For further information, contact: councilelections@lawsociety.org.uk

Full Election timetable

Download the timetable (PDF 47kb)