Vacancies
Section 10: Constituency Vacancies
65.Section 10 provides for the filling of a constituency seat which becomes vacant (for example, because of the resignation or death of the Assembly constituency member). A by-election must be held, on a date fixed by the Assembly’s Presiding Officer, which must be within 3 months of the vacancy arising, unless it appears to the Presiding Officer that the latest day on which the poll could be held would be within 3 months of the date when the next ordinary general election is due to take place (in which case the seat will remain vacant until the general election.)
66.At a by-election, electors cast only one vote, for a named constituency candidate, (as opposed to the two votes at a general election, when electors are electing both a constituency member and regional members).
Section 11: Electoral Region Vacancies
67.Section 11 provides the machinery for filling a regional seat which becomes vacant (for example, because of the resignation or death of the Assembly regional member). If the seat which has fallen vacant was held by a candidate drawn from the list which a party had submitted at the previous general election, the vacancy is filled by the next candidate on that list, provided that person still wishes to be elected, and, in the case of a person who has ceased to be a member of the party, the party has not given notice that it does not wish that person to fill the vacancy.
68.A person who has, since that general election, been a candidate in a constituency by-election, is barred from taking up a regional vacancy as is a person who has previously been allocated a regional seat (and has, for example, ceased to hold that seat by reason of having resigned).
69.If, for any reason, the vacant seat cannot be filled from a party’s list (for example because all the candidates on the list have been exhausted or the only candidates who are left are barred from filling the vacancy) then the seat remains vacant until the next ordinary or extraordinary general election.
70.If the Assembly regional member whose seat has become vacant was elected as an individual candidate, as opposed to being drawn from a party list, there is no procedure for filling the seat and it remains vacant until the next ordinary or extraordinary general election.
