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Holyrood opinion poll

With the publication of the interim Calman Report, do you think –
 
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Single transferable vote a "success" Print E-mail
Friday, 18 May 2007

The first Scottish council elections under STV were a major success, and this must not get lost in recriminations about spoilt ballots in the Parliamentary elections, the Electoral Reform Society said today.

Director of research Lewis Baston presenting the Society's initial findings into the council election results, pointed out that the Single Transferable Vote (STV) got rid of many anomalies that existed under First Past the Post, and gave voters much more power over the outcome of elections.

For example, Edinburgh City Council was strongly controlled by Labour, despite the party getting almost the same results in terms of votes than the SNP. Renfrewshire Council was under Labour control after the 2003 election despite Labour actually winning less of the vote than the SNP.

Baston also pointed out that STV delivered much more choice for voters, with voters having an average choice of 7.5 candidates in 2007 compared to 3.5 in 2003. In Glasgow, voters on average had a choice of 10 candidates rather than four as in 2003.

The number of spoilt papers in the 2007 local government elections was 38,500, considerably up on 2003, but the number of valid ballots was by 177,000 and the percentage of spoilt ballots in proportion to votes cast was actually down to 2 per cent.

Chief executive Dr Ken Ritchie said that, while there was a valid argument for holding two elections on the same day to improve voter turnout, the judgement to do so in retrospect was "wrong".

Pointing to the success of the STV local authority vote, he suggested that the same voting system should be used for the Parliament, although he conceded that an STV vote probably would not have made a great deal of difference to the balance of political parties now at Holyrood.

He argued that STV could get past the issue of regional list places being regarded as MSP consolation prizes, and list MSPs being regarded as second class citizens in the Parliament.

He also revealed that the Electoral Reform Society, which had only set up an office in Scotland temporarily, would keep the office as it had "much work still to do".
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