After counting all of the Number 1 votes, if not all of the seats are filled, a ballot transfer process is intiated, where the last place candidate is elminated and his or her ballots are transfered to those ballot's Number 2 candidates. This process continues until all of the seats available are filled. The STV helps insure that almost all of the voters get their top candidates elected and that the results are fair and in proportion to how they voted. This is a very common form of PR, used all over the world. Basically, each political party produces a slate of candidates with as many names as there are seats up for election.
Voters can then vote for their favorite party.
There are different forms of the Party list system. Mixed Member System. Usually, half the seats would be filled by the district seats. Then the other half would be determined by taking the results of the party-list vote and adding it to the results of the district vote in order to insure that the final legislative body is made up the correct party proportions. Back at our homepage you can learn more about our efforts to bring it back to Illinois.