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Anomalies of new election system - for The Inverness Courier
IN less than three months’ time, readers of this column will be asked to vote for members of the Scottish Parliament and Highland Council. Perhaps confusingly, these elections will take place under two different proportional voting systems.
The biggest change will come in Highland Council. The new system will have larger wards, bringing together three or four existing wards, and rather than voting for one candidate you can indicate your order of preference.
Contrary to incorrect information in circulation last week, voters are not limited to expressing their top four choices. If there are 20 candidates you can, if you wish, rank them in order of preference from one to 20.
The virtue of this system is that there is no need to vote tactically, because the best way to make your views count is to express them honestly.
Nor does voting for one party candidate necessarily mean supporting another from the same party. If you like the Lib Dem candidate best, and the Independent second best, you can say so.
The system for the Scottish Parliament is different, in that you get two votes, one for your local MSP and one for the party list. The list vote is often misleadingly referred to as a “second” vote, as if it were a way of expressing a second preference. In fact, it is a “regional” vote, deciding how many seats each party gets from the list.
This often causes some confusing, and potentially undemocratic, situations to arise.
For example, a sitting constituency MSP can also try to get on the list for an election as an “insurance policy”. If you are number one on the list for a major party in a region where you do not have many constituency seats, that person is virtually guaranteed election to the Scottish Parliament. One of Inverness’s constituency MSPs has done exactly that.
That means that if the local electorate decide they want to throw out the constituency MSP and replace them with someone else, that person could well still be in the Scottish Parliament, as a list MSP!
Equally odd is the situation facing Alex Salmond, who is assuming that he will be the next first minister. No politician should presume to know what the voters verdict will be, but many people don’t know that there is a strong chance that Mr Salmond will not even be an MSP.
He is standing in the Gordon constituency which, despite the hype, he is thought unlikely to win. So then he would hope to get in on the list. But if the SNP win Dundee West from Labour, they won’t get him in on the list either! So their real candidate for first minister is, in fact, Nicola Sturgeon.
I would prefer to see the Scottish Parliament elected by a system closer to the one that will be used for Highland Council. For Holyrood, the party chooses the order of the list so you have little say on which individual gets in. The council systems puts more power in the hands of the voter.
So the most important message is, when election day comes, use your vote, it will make a difference.
Posted on: 13/02/2007
