If it is remembered at all, the 2016 Holyrood election is likely to be remembered for voter fatigue and confusion.

There have simply been too many elections, too many referendums. And I can't remember a Holyrood vote when there have been more “noises off”, ranging from the anti-Semitism row in the Labour Party to the battle over the European Union. What have Scottish voters made of senior Labour politicians jabbing fingers and calling each other Nazi sympathisers? Blank incomprehension, mostly.

The UK media has largely been dominated by a replay of Project Fear as the Treasury, the Bank of England, big business and Barack Obama have weighed in using the same economic arguments against Brexit that were used against Scottish independence only 18 months ago. Scottish voters could be forgiven for thinking they were living in a time warp. And the sense of constitutional deja vu was reinforced in the final days as the Scottish political parties decided to have a row about a second Scottish independence referendum even though Nicola Sturgeon has insisted she has no intention of holding one.

This has inevitably distracted from the very important issues at stake in Holyrood, like taxation, which have seemed parochial by comparison. Indeed, the Conservatives don’t appear to be fighting this election at all in Scotland, having handed over to the Ruth Davidson party. I received a six-page leaflet from her yesterday that did not mention the word Tory or Conservative anywhere except in the small print. Kezia Dugdale does at least admit to being a member of the Labour Party, though that may not have helped in her battle to avoid being in third place after today.

And then there's the voting system. In recent days, the SNP have been ramping up their call for “bothvotesSNP” with twibbons, arm-bands and appeals to their armies of internet supporters. There have been fears a low turnout, complacency and a challenge from the Scottish Green Party might deprive Ms Sturgeon of the overall majority the opinion polls have been saying is hers for the taking.

The argument involves the obscure algorithms of the d'Hondt method and even seasoned political analysts have great difficulty explaining, a: how it works; and b: whether an SNP vote on the list is a wasted vote. So, as a public service, here is my idiot’s guide to Holyrood voting.

The Scottish Parliament was devised by civil society activists who rejected the electoral system of Westminster as being undemocratic. With first past the post voting, the number of seats a party wins in the House of Commons rarely reflects the number of votes they actually receive in a general election. Both Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair had huge majorities in the Commons on a minority of the popular vote. In 1997, for example, Labour had a majority of 169 on less than 50 per cent of the vote.

Supporters of this inflated majority believe it ensures firm and effective government. But it also means headstrong prime ministers like Mr Blair can effectively do what they like, such as engaging in unpopular wars, without having to bother about winning the argument in parliament. So, Holyrood's voting system is on a system of proportional representation called the Additional Member System which is designed to ensure “fair voting”.

The first 73 constituency seats are elected on First Past the Post – the system that operates in Westminster. To make the distribution of seats more fairly reflect the number of votes cast for each party, Scots also have a second, list vote. Elected in Scotland's eight regions, these 56 list seats are distributed in a way which effectively compensates the losing parties by topping up their seats in the chamber to match their overall votes in the country.

Under the d'Hondt method, the number of votes a party wins on the regional list is divided by the number of constituency seats they have won plus one. This sounds like weird science, but it’s actually fairly simple. In Glasgow there are nine constituency seats and seven list seats up for grabs. Say the SNP win all nine constituency seats in Glasgow and also get 100,000 list votes. Their list votes will be divided, in the first round, by their nine seats plus one, meaning that they effectively have only 10,000 votes in the list. That may not be enough to win any list seats.

If Labour win no constituency seats in Glasgow, but get 80,000 votes on the list, they would end up possibly having all 7 of the list seats. Though, obviously, other parties like the Tories or Greens, might also win seats here. There are seven rounds of calculations on the list votes. It's estimated that if a party gets around six per cent of the list votes in any region it will get a seat. On recent polls, the independence-supporting Scottish Green Party could get around eight list seats across Scotland.

But in recent days the SNP has been worried support for the Greens might get out of control, and encourage some SNP supporters to vote promiscuously on the list – to split their ticket. There has been huge argument in the independence movement on this and much angry noise in social media. The Greens, RISE and Tommy Sheridan's Solidarity argue such is the dominance of the SNP in the constituency section – they are likely to get nearly all of the first past the post votes – that it is sensible for people to vote for other independence-supporting parties on the list Indeed, this might boost the total number of indy MSPs.

According to Professor John Curtice, the SNP only have a real chance of getting list seats in Highlands and Islands. But the SNP say: don't listen to this nonsense. In 2011, when the SNP had its landslide, its overall majority in the parliament was based entirely on its list seats. It only won 53 first past the post constituencies and requires 65 seats for a majority. In other words, if people had voted for the smaller parties back then, there would not have been an independence referendum because the SNP would not have had an overall majority. Ms Sturgeon asks: why take the risk? If you want the most powerful SNP government you simply have to vote SNP twice.

There is no way of resolving this mathematically. Voters have to ask themselves whether they favour any party dominating Holyrood or whether they think smaller parties are good for democracy. It is difficult, though not impossible, to vote tactically in the list vote because the d'Hondt method irons out electoral anomalies. It is not like first past the post, where sometimes voting for a party you don't particularly like is the best way of ensuring the party you really hate doesn't win.

Democracy is not an exact science. You can't dial-a-vote in Holyrood. Voters have to think about which parties they really, really want to see sitting in Holyrood and vote accordingly. But there is something much more effective than all this tactical maths and that is to turn up at the polling booths. This may have been a dull campaign but every election is equally important. And if you don’t vote you can’t complain about the result