The Scottish electoral system is “fragmented and antiquated” and should be “unacceptable to modern democracy”, Minister for Parliamentary Business Bruce Crawford said today.
Commenting at the publication of the Government’s response to Robert Gould’s report on the May 2007 Scottish elections, Crawford said that full administrative and legislative responsibility for the Scottish Parliamentary elections should come to the Scottish Parliament.
He said: "Ron Gould's report into the administrative fiasco of the election in May 2007 described in detail the complicated systems and structures that have been created over the years to manage our elections.
"It demonstrated that the Scottish electoral system is fragmented and antiquated, with no clear lines of accountability for its management or to the people of Scotland.”
He described the current approach as a “patchwork”, with too many bodies, pieces of legislation and opportunities for things to wrong, adding: "The fragmentation of roles and responsibilities were identified as being critical obstacles to the delivery of elections. The current system should be unacceptable to modern democracy.”
He argued that the Gould Report provides a “unique opportunity” to introduce the necessary reforms to address these underlying problems and restore voter confidence in the electoral system, and called the opposition to look
He continued: "This is an issue that should be beyond politics, an issue above point-scoring. We must make the changes necessary to ensure we never have a repeat of last May's problems. That means wholesale changes, not tinkering around the edges.
"We believe – as does the Parliament – that the key step would be for clear and coherent responsibility for executive and legislative election functions in Scotland to rest with the Scottish Government and the Scottish Parliament.
"That was Ron Gould's view – that responsibility be assigned to "one jurisdictional entity" and that the Scottish Government be "the logical institution".
He said that the government also believes that this would be the “most practical way” of improving the management of elections and it intends to take forward the other recommendations of the Gould report.
"Today we are publishing a consultation paper on decoupling the Parliamentary and local elections. Further consultations will follow in the role of the Chief Returning Officer and on the design of ballot papers and other operational issues.
"If we are to rebuild the public's trust in our voting system, we must start work now to be fully prepared ahead of the next elections and ensure the problems experienced last May are never repeated. That is what the voters of Scotland expect and deserve."
One person has commented on this article. 1. Scottish electoral system “unacceptable”
Anonymous, Unregistered Since Gould recommended against electronic counting for elections to Westminster and also for elections to Scottish Councils until the serious security problems had been sorted out [assuming they can be - which many computer experts deny], I am concerned that centralised electronic counting will be retained with respect to Scottish Parliamentary elections.
I hope I have got this wrong. But if not I warn of further plummetting in the level of public trust int he political process.
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