Elections for Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) will be held on Thursday, May 5th 2016.

The PCCs are elected to oversee how crime is tackled in the local police force area. Their aim is to cut crime and ensure that the police force is effective.

The candidates for the West Mercia police force are as follows:

John-Paul Campion - Conservative

Peter Jewell - UKIP

John Watson Raine - Green Party

Margaret Rowley - Liberal Democrats

Barrie Sheldon - Independent

Daniel Walton - Labour

The elections for Police and Crime Commissioners (PCC) use the supplementary vote system. This is different to other elections, which use the first past the post system. For this election you can vote for a first and second choice of who you want to win.

The ballot paper will list all the candidates standing in your area. Next to the list of candidates there will be two columns.

You will be asked to: vote for your first choice candidate by marking a cross (X) in the first choice column, and vote for your second choice candidate by marking a cross (X) in the second-choice column. As long as you mark one cross in the first choice column, your vote will be counted.

You should not mark more than one cross in the first choice column and you should not mark more than one cross in the second choice column.

If you have marked a first choice, you can choose whether or not to mark a second-choice. But if you only mark a cross in the second-choice column, your vote won’t be counted.

If you mark a cross next to the same candidate in the first and second choice column, your ballot paper will still be accepted but you would not be marking a second-choice. If you want to mark a second-choice, you should mark a cross next to a different candidate in the second choice column.

If you make a mistake then you can ask the polling staff to give you a replacement ballot paper.

The first preferences are counted, and if a candidate has received more than 50% of the votes cast they are elected.

If no candidate has more than 50% of the votes, all candidates apart from those in first and second place are eliminated.

The ballot papers showing a first preference for the eliminated candidates are checked for their second preference. Any second preference votes for the two remaining candidates are then added to the candidates’ first preference votes and the candidate with the most number of votes wins.