The 2024 General Election in Scotland was a one-sided affair. Scottish Labour won 35.3% of the vote in Scotland and 64.9% of the available seats. While the SNP came a narrow second place on 30% of the vote and won 15.8% of the seats. The polls may have shifted since then, but can we expect to see a similar result in the Holyrood election this May?

Thankfully, elections to the Scottish Parliament in Holyrood do not work the same way as in Westminster. The Additional Member System we use was designed to be more balanced, to reflect how people vote rather than just who comes first. And understanding how that works helps explain both the strengths and the limits of the system.

Two votes, two different jobs

At a Scottish Parliament election, every voter casts two votes. One is for a local constituency MSP, and one is for a party or candidate on a regional list.

There are 129 MSPs in total. Of these, 73 are elected in constituencies, while 56 are elected from regional lists, across eight regions.

The first vote works in a familiar way to Westminster. Each constituency elects one MSP using first past the post, so the candidate with the most votes wins, even if the majority didn’t vote for them. First Past the Post can lead to the kind of crazy results we saw in Westminster, so this is where the second vote comes in.

This vote is used to allocate additional “list” seats, designed to balance out the results and make them more proportional overall – so Scotland’s parliament more closely matches how Scotland voted.

How the list system corrects results

After constituency MSPs are announced, the list votes are counted. Seats are then allocated to make the parliament more closely match how Scots voted in the regional list contest.

This means that parties which have done well in constituencies are less likely to gain list seats, as they already won their fair share of seats in the constituency contest. Parties that have been squeezed out locally therefore have a better chance of representation through the list.

It is often described as a “top-up” system. And that is exactly what it is meant to do. But topping up only works if there is enough room to do it. With 73 constituency seats and only 56 list seats, more than half of the Parliament is still elected using first past the post. We’ve previously written about how this could be improved to better represent how Scots vote.

Getting the most out of your vote

What does this all mean? The key thing to remember is that this is not a Westminster-style election. Holyrood’s voting system wants you to be represented in Parliament.

The typical region contains nine constituency seats and seven regional ones. As a result, a party or independent candidate needs to win around 6% in a region to win a seat. As long as you vote for a party that has at least this level of support, you should win representation in parliament.

If you support a party that is very popular in your region, there is a chance they will win their fair share, or more, of seats in the constituency contest, so they can’t win any more from the second vote contest. Should you split your vote then, and cast the second ballot for a different party? It depends on your appetite for risk. If your preferred party doesn’t end up winning all the constituency seats you expected, your clever tactical game could backfire as they miss out on list seats, due to a lack of list votes.

As Scottish voters prepare to go to the polls in May, they can do so knowing that their vote will count and the parliament elected will be representative – a luxury most voters in England don’t have in their local elections on the same day. And now, after 25 years of fair elections in Scotland, surely it’s time Westminster caught up and ensured that voters in England could vote with the same peace of mind.

If you care about the quality of our elections, join the Electoral Reform Society today

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It is now 15 years since Scotland abandoned First Past the Post for local government elections and adopted the Single Transferable Vote form of proportional representation. What many will have seen as a small shift in process has led to a sea-change in local politics, an end to ‘one party states’, and more power for voters. Within that decade and a half we have grown to understand what other countries like Ireland knew already: with fair votes comes better democracy.

I have worked for ERS Scotland since 2016, but back in 2007 I was a volunteer for the Society, spending six months talking to voters about the new system, and attending an election count as an observer. From what I saw on the ground, it took parties slightly longer than the electorate to realise that this change to the voting system also meant a whole new way of doing politics. Now every vote would count – and parties would have to act differently.

Since then, competitive local elections have helped to refresh local democracy across Scotland. I would still like to see more cooperation between parties at a council level, but within our multi-member wards, councillors generally have very good relations regardless of affiliation. Councils across Scotland have experienced power-sharing, with a wider range of parties working together in local government.

STV allows voters to not only express their preferences between parties but also within them, this means that councillors no longer have the option to be distant and unaccountable without consequences.

There are still a few who miss the old way of doing things though – I’ve occasionally heard councillors complain that they have to work harder under the new system. But I have never once heard a voter make the same complaint!

Solely changing the voting system has not been a cure-all: Scotland’s local government is still too centralised and top-down. There are too few councillors, and Scotland has one of the lowest rates of local representation in Europe. That’s why ERS Scotland has been playing a leadership role in the Our Democracy coalition; the campaign for a truly powerful and participatory local democracy.

Because of our increasingly long experience of proportional systems as a nation (15 years for local government and 23 years for Holyrood), when we now come to use Westminster’s one-person-takes-all system, it seems perverse and unwieldly. Westminster-style voting systems are shown up as the blunt instrument they are – unable to turn a multitude of your hopes into a binary choice.

That’s why the people of Scotland are well placed to say to their English and Welsh neighbours that there is a better way of doing democracy, and we have the proof.

STV means an end to wasted votes. For those looking for advice on using the full power of that vote, read Phil’s blog on it. You can read more about PR in Scotland.

Sign our petition to upgrade local elections in England and Wales

As part of the launch of the Electoral Reform Society’s new report – Here to Stay: Two Decades of Proportional Representation in Britain – I recently spoke to politicians across Britain about their experiences of being elected with PR.

Scotland’s councils switched to the Single Transferable Vote – the gold standard of proportional representation in the ERS’ eyes – in 2007, and hasn’t looked back since.

In this interview, I spoke to Conservative councillor Dave Dempsey – leader of the opposition on Fife Council, which is run by an SNP-Labour coalition. Cllr Dempsey is a keen supporter of proportional representation, in contrast to the wider party’s support for Westminster’s voting system.

Questions and answers have been trimmed for brevity.

Josiah Mortimer: Why do you back STV for local councils in Scotland?

Cllr Dempsey: It removes the need for voters to vote for something they don’t want, to stop them getting something they want even less.

There aren’t all that many who go back to or before the 2007 switchover [to STV]. It took a bit of adjusting to, but I don’t remember any real revolt.

Is anyone calling for a return to FPTP?

Not at our level, not at council level.

You – and even Labour figures – have mentioned before that Fife was a one-party Labour fiefdom. Do you think that fiefdom structure and mentality stemmed at least partly from the fact that there was a winner takes all voting system?

Yes.

Do people think it’s still a problem now?

No, nobody. I don’t think anybody quite thinks like that anymore.  The seats are spread out proportionally as you would expect!

It works out at there’s an SNP councillor in every ward. There’s a Labour councillor in most of the wards. We [Conservatives] are fairly spread through. I don’t think anybody thinks of any bit as theirs.

You must speak to your SNP colleagues and obviously your Conservative colleagues quite regularly within your multi-member ward. Do you work together on issues?

Yes. We have a [all-ward councillor] work meeting roughly every six weeks. And I describe them as most useful meetings we attend.

We also have, again, roughly every six or eight weeks, a formal committee meeting at what’s called area level, which is roughly three wards.

I would challenge someone attending, not if someone just walked in off the street and sat down to guess who was in which party, because even at that level, and that’s 10 councillors for us it is still pretty consensual and good natured.

How would you describe the relationship with other councillors? How do voters respond?

One description is competitive cooperation, and the other is cooperative competition. You can take your pick. We are trying to steal a march on other parties while at the same time cooperating for the public.

We’ve got two SNP and two Conservatives in my ward, but we still there’s a lot of interaction. I get the impression that other wards find their modus operandi and they come to some way of doing it, which suits the three or four of them and they get on with it.

Would you say that voters take note of this – do you think they value that sense of cooperation and, and having a choice of councillors to go to at one time, from different parties?

We have things called community councils up here, which I think are probably closest to parish councils, but they don’t have much of a budget to deploy. So, they’re that conduit for information. And the four of us turn up pretty religiously. I think [voters] appreciate the fact that they can, to some extent, play us off against each other.

I say to voters: if you’ve got an issue and you’re not getting joy of the system, email all your ward councillors. So, all of them know that all the others have got it. And see who jumps first.

That is quite an effective way of doing it, because you can use the fact that you have this degree of competition.

We have tended to specialise. There’s a councillor in the ward who’s considerably longer in service than me – she goes back to the old previous era. And she specializes in council housing and social work. That’s what drives her. I’m an ex-engineer. I’m known as the man for potholes and trees. So, we have developed specialisms and we do on occasions refer to other members.

That seems to be part of a trend across Scotland.

If you take the north of Scotland, you have this wonderful thing: councils controlled by independents. It clearly works for them.

Would a switch to PR help at Westminster for Scotland?

If you take the SNP MPs, it’s down from the 56 [seats] or what it was at its peak for Westminster, but the central belt in particular is just [SNP] yellow from one end to the other. The results are a very, very poor reflection of what the voters’ opinion is.

The UK government plans to roll back preferential voting for mayors in England [abolishing voters’ second preference]. What do you make of it?

Oh dear. I don’t approve of that at all.

When STV came in here, there was strong resistance from a lot of our members and activists on the basis that nobody gives us second preference vote. The idea that nobody gives us preferences has disappeared. Nobody talks about it now, and it’s fundamentally not true.

Read the full report, Here To Stay

A council in Scotland will write to the Prime Minister to formally oppose plans to bring in voter ID at future general elections, the Daily Record has reported.

Renfrewshire councillor Kenny MacLaren brought forward a motion at a meeting on Thursday arguing the move could have a detrimental impact on turnout, and called on members to reject the UK Government’s proposal. It was overwhelmingly passed by councillors. Could more follow suit?

Voter ID would be imposed across the UK for General Elections if ministers pass the controversial policy in the upcoming Elections Bill.

The policy – revealed in the Queen’s Speech – will mean someone who forgets to bring ID, or who lacks ID altogether, will be turned away and denied a vote.

But the government’s own data shows that around two million voters do not have an acceptable form of ID – meaning they are at high risk of being locked out of our democracy.

For cash-strapped councils, this policy looks like an expensive distraction – at a cost of up to £20m to administer per General Election.  It represents an attack on devolution, with devolved councils in Scotland and Wales forced to turn away voters they know, simply for not possessing the ‘right’ ID. If a Holyrood election is held on the same day as one for Westminster, voters without ID look set to be denied a vote – despite neither Scotland or Wales’ governments wanting to impose this dangerous policy.

It’s also unnecessary. One councillor described mandatory ID as a ‘sledgehammer to crack a nut’, given there is zero evidence of widespread wrongdoing by voters.

In fact, new research from the Electoral Commission shows public confidence in the running of elections is at its highest level on record.

Four in five respondents are confident that elections in the UK are well run, up from 71% last year. Satisfaction with the process of voting (86%) is also at a record high.

The real concern among voters isn’t people going round impersonating someone else in the ballot box, but the fact that trust in parties funding sources is at rock bottom, having been in decline since the Commission’s research began. Only 14% of respondents said they believed political finance was transparent, down from 37% in 2011.

Council workers do not want to be turned into bouncers at the polling station. They – and voters – trust their local elections. What they don’t trust is the millions in dark money that can be funnelled into parties with almost no transparency.

Ministers are slightly less keen to crack on with tackling that problem…

Are you a councillor concerned by this policy, or would you like your local councillor to pass a similar motion? Get in touch: ers@electoral-reform.org.uk

Do you agree with the councillors? Sign our petition

Over 12 million voters have a powerful voice today, with proportional representation used in Wales, Scotland and on the London Assembly.

Elections to the Welsh Senedd, Scottish Parliament and London Assembly all use the Additional Member System, a proportional voting system that ensures seats elected more closely match how people vote.

The system is a glowing contrast to Westminster’s warped, outdated one-party-takes-all system of First Past the Post.

With AMS, voters have two ballot papers. On the first is a list of candidates who want to be their constituency representative, where the voter marks their preferred candidate with a cross.

The second ballot decides the strength of each party in the chamber. If a party has five MPs from the constituencies and its fair share (based on the second ballot) is eight MPs, then three candidates from its list are likely to become MPs. To ensure proportional results, the list seats typically cover larger areas, such as regions in Scotland and Wales.

The goal of AMS is to provide a proportional parliament but also keep a single local representative.

The ERS sees the Single Transferable Vote system as the ‘gold standard’, used for local elections in Scotland and Northern Ireland, but AMS is a marked improvement on Westminster’s First Past the Post system.

The Electoral Reform Society has used voter registration data to find that:

• 4.2 million potential voters in Scotland have the chance to secure fair representation, alongside;
• 2.3 million potential voters in Wales;
• 6.1 million potential voters in London

More than 12m potential voters all have the chance to ‘genuinely be heard’ today through proportional representation.

The Supplementary Vote is also being used across England and Wales to elect mayors and Police and Crime Commissioners – meaning nearly all voters have the chance to use a fairer voting system this Thursday, rather than the zero-sum FPTP method.

After more than 20 years of use, proportional representation is now firmly established across the UK, stopping single parties unfairly sweeping the board, and giving voters real choice.

Voters being represented in proportion to their number is at the heart of what a modern democracy should look like, with a strong voice for the public, plus a stronger role for cooperation and working together. Proportional representation has been doing its job effectively in Scotland for decades now, and voters benefit hugely from it. The political diversity in the nations is testament to all voters being heard.

At its core, proportional representation is about a simple principle: in a democracy, seats should match how people actually vote. This simple principle is cast aside at Westminster, leading to chaotic ‘lottery’ elections where a small national swing can lead to wildly different outcomes.

Instead of trying to impose First Past the Post on mayoral and PCC elections that have never used them, ministers should be looking at how to boost our democracy through scrapping one-party-takes-all voting, and giving the public proportional representation at last.

Millions of voters are able to cast their ballots today in the clear knowledge their vote will make a real impact. It’s a testament to how a fairer voting system tackles some of the big problems with winner-takes-all voting.

Proportional representation is now the norm in most parts of the UK. Westminster and England’s councils, by contrast, are looking increasingly unjust and outdated. Voters deserve to be heard wherever they are.

Sign our petition for a fair voting system in the UK

A coalition of civil society organisations and community groups is calling on MSPs to implement the findings of the landmark Citizens’ Assembly of Scotland, as Holyrood debates the Assembly’s findings on Thursday.

Electoral Reform Society Scotland has organised a joint letter from nearly 20 community groups and campaigners from across the country, calling for citizens to be involved in decision-making in their areas outside of election time.

The Citizens’ Assembly of Scotland – 100 people picked to be broadly representative of the country – showed we can lead the way in building a stronger, more community-led democracy. And it showed citizens themselves can shape the path forward for Scotland after this pandemic.

But MSPs must do more than debate the findings – they must take forward proposals to boost scrutiny and transparency, and open up decision-making to local communities.

From new local assemblies (as set out by the ERS here), to a House of Citizens scrutinising legislation, politicians can start to share power and ensure that as we come out of this crisis, everyone has a stake in shaping what comes next.

It’s clear that people want a clearer say in shaping their areas, and we need to see a vision for local democracy taken forward by MSPs that captures this.

Amazingly despite the pandemic, the Citizens’ Assembly was able to continue and make really powerful, creative recommendations for moving politics outside of town halls and into communities.

The report must not be marked ‘job done’ – it’s a blueprint for a renewed Scotland, drawing on all this country’s experience.

See our full joint letter, published in the Scotsman today:

Joint letter: MSPs – It’s time for Holyrood to trust in communities across Scotland by backing the Citizens’ Assembly

This Thursday, MSPs meet to discuss the findings of Scotland’s ground-breaking Citizens’ Assembly, a democratic process reflecting the diversity of the country. The Assembly brought everyday citizens together to debate the big issues facing us, and its calls deserve all our attention.

The 60 proposals for Scotland’s future provide a template for more accountable ways of doing politics here: for democracy to be genuinely local, grassroots, and not just an event every five years. Assembly members of all backgrounds were clear that more needs to be done in Scotland to move power out of Holyrood and into local communities.

The Assembly overwhelmingly recommended – with 90% support – establishing community-based citizens’ assemblies as we come out of the current crisis, a recommendation we wholeheartedly endorse. These would hold councils to account between elections and let residents shape their place’s future. 

Communities themselves have the best knowledge of the skills and experience within their areas, and must be at the heart of paving a positive way out of this pandemic. People need more involvement in plotting a socially just recovery. The appetite is there: now they need resources and real support.

Over the past few years ERS Scotland and the Our Democracy coalition have worked with communities across Scotland – including some of the most left behind areas  – and the message we’ve heard time and again is that people want a clearer say, not just during elections. 

We urge all parties to listen to the Assembly, and people across Scotland, and do something brave: share power, and give everyone a stronger stake in deciding what comes next.

1. Willie Sullivan, Director, ERS Scotland
2. Dr Oliver Escobar, Co-Director, What Works Scotland
3. Amanda Burgauer, Common Weal and Our Democracy Coalition 
4. Stacey Felgate & Rhona Dougall, Organisers, The People’s Council (Argyll)
5. Dr Craig Dalzell, Head of Policy & Research, Common Weal
6. Fiona Garven, Director, Scottish Community Development Centre (SCDC), incorporating the Community Health Exchange (CHEX) and PB Scotland
7. Matt Baker. Orchestrator, The Stove Network (Dumfries)
8. James Robertson, Campaigns Manager, Sortition Foundation
9. Abigale Neate Wilson, Project Manager, Agile City CIC
10. Planning Democracy
11. Angus Hardie, Director, Scottish Community Alliance
12. Glasgow Tool Library
13. Democratic Society
14. Dr Gemma Bone Dodds, WEAll Scotland Trustee
15. Lewis McLachlan, Founder of Empty Kitchens, Full Hearts. CIC
16. Martin Avila, Director, Kinning Park Complex
17. Professor Richard Kerley
18. Pauline Grandison, Programme Manager, Coalfields Regeneration Trust
19. Enid Trevett, Kincardine Community Association Ltd

The relevant section of the CA report is called ‘How decisions are taken’. Members thought government scrutiny and citizen-led decision making were so key to Scotland’s future, with these calls making up almost a quarter of all the recommendations.

Of the 14 recommendations on scrutiny and citizens’ involvement, the majority got 90% agreement, with the full range being from low 80s to the high 90s. That means they all achieved a broad consensus in their backing from the representative assembly.

Members also found that Holyrood is opaque and unaccountable, which might chime with a growing sense that power in Holyrood is too centralised.

It’s time to transform Scottish democracy and put citizens at the centre.

Sign our petition calling for a House of Citizens

The New Zealand Labour party are celebrating a landslide win, with 49 percent of the vote and enough MPs to form a single-party government on their own. This is the first time since New Zealand upgraded their electoral system to Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) – also known as the Additional Member System (AMS) in the UK – that one party has gained enough MPs to form a government on its own, but it’s a timely reminder that proportional systems don’t automatically lead to coalitions – proportional representation just supplies the parliament people vote for.

Despite achieving a majority of the vote New Zealand Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern chose to sign a formal ‘cooperation’ agreement with the Green party, showing how embedded the culture of cooperation and working together endemic in proportional systems has become in New Zealand’s politics.

New Zealand isn’t the only parliament that use a form of proportional representation to have a single-party government recently. The SNP formed a government on their own in Scotland in 2011 and were only a few seats away in 2016.

No system is perfectly proportional – New Zealand has a threshold of 5% to stop tiny parties winning seats, so while New Zealand Labour nearly got a majority of the vote overall (49%), they got a majority of the votes that elected people to parliament (53% ) (These are the preliminary results, so may slightly change).

To put the proportionality of the voting system in context, with MMP the New Zealand Labour Party won 53% of the seats on 49% of the vote in 2020, while with First Past the Post the UK Labour Party won 55.1% of the seats on 35.2% of the vote in 2005. More recently the Conservatives 2019 election result where they secured 43.6% saw that translated into over 55% of the seats due to the warping effects of First Past the Post.

Across the twentieth century countries with proportional systems have had single-party governments when voters want them to. In 1957, Germany was governed by a single parliamentary group and in Ireland Fianna Fáil governed on their own with a majority in 1938, 1944, 1957, 1965 and 1977. Similarly, Malta, a country that uses Single Transferable Vote to elect its house of representatives, has not had a coalition since the 1950’s.

Unlike First Past the Post which has a bias against smaller parties whose supporters are not geographically concentrated in specific constituencies, proportional voting systems simply reflect how people vote. If people want a single-party majority, they get one; if no party is popular enough to rule alone then they have to find coalition partners.

The idea that proportional systems are designed to stop majorities is rooted in the normalisation of First Past the Post in the UK. A system where you need an advanced degree in statistics to build a Multilevel Regression and Post-Stratification model if you want to know how many seats a party on 45% in the polls will get is labelled as simple, while one where the answer is ‘about 45%’ is ‘confusing and complicated’.

Unlike First Past the Post, proportional voting systems don’t change the results of elections, warping the parliaments out of recognition from how people voted. They simply try their best to reflect how the nation votes – if you want a single party government under a proportional system you need to get out there and actually convince people to vote for you – rather than relying on the system doing the hard work for you.

Sign our petition for a fair voting system in the UK

It is now 13 years since Scotland abandoned First Past the Post for local government elections and adopted the Single Transferrable Vote form of proportional representation.

What many will have seen as a small shift in process has led to a sea-change in local politics, an end to ‘one party states’, and more power for voters.

Within the 13 years we have grown to understand what other countries like Ireland knew already: with fair votes comes better democracy.

I have only worked for ERS Scotland since 2016, but back in 2007 I was a volunteer for the Society, spending six months talking to voters about the new system, and attending an election count as an observer.

From what I saw on the ground, it took parties slightly longer than the electorate to realise that this change to the voting system also meant a whole new way of doing politics. Now every vote would count – and parties would act differently.

Since then, competitive local elections have helped to refresh local democracy across Scotland. I would still like to see more cooperation between parties at a council level, but within our multi-member wards, councillors generally have very good relations regardless of affiliation. Councils across Scotland have experienced power-sharing, with a wider range of parties working together in local government.

STV allows voters to not only express their preferences between parties but also within them, this means that councillors no longer have the option to be distant and unaccountable without consequences.

Solely changing the voting system has not been a cure-all: Scotland’s local government is still too centralised and top down. There are too few councillors, and Scotland has one of the lowest rates of local representation in Europe.

That’s why ERS Scotland has been playing a key role in the Democracy Matters consultation, through Our Democracy, the campaign for a truly powerful and participatory local democracy. There are still a few who miss the old way of doing things too – I’ve occasionally heard councillors complain that they have to work harder under the new system. But I have never once heard a voter make the same complaint!

Because of our increasingly long experience of proportional systems as a nation (13 years for local government and 21 years for Holyrood), when we now come to use Westminster’s one-person-takes-all system, it seems perverse and unwieldly.

Westminster-style voting systems are shown up as the blunt instrument they are – unable to turn a multitude of your hopes into a binary choice.

That’s why the people of Scotland are well placed to say to their English and Welsh neighbours that there is a better way of doing democracy, and we have the proof.

At the final set of council elections under the old First Past the Post system in 2003, 61 councillors were elected unopposed in Scotland, without a vote. It was simply not worth standing opposing candidates as the system made it so hard for voters to kick out the incumbents. But in the first proportional election of 2007 there was not one uncontested seat. Read more about PR in Scotland here.

Phil Connor is ERS Scotland’s Campaigns Officer, and wrote this piece on 9th April.

See also: A tale of two by-elections: How STV produces fairer outcomes

Sign our petition for fair local elections across the whole UK

For most of the 20^th century, every election in Scotland was conducted under the First Past the Post system, from elections of MPs to local councillors.

Much like in the rest of the UK, this system resulted in little connection between voters and their MPs. Many MPs sat in ‘safe seats’ with little chance of ever being thrown out. Other MPs sat in ‘marginal seats’, where a small sub-section of the electorate could decide whole elections with tiny swings of the vote.

Scotland’s civil society and most of the political parties formed the Scottish Constitutional Convention in 1989 to work on creating a parliament for a modern democracy, fit for the centuries ahead, not stuck in the past.

The Convention called for an electoral system that could make a break from the stale two-party politics of Westminster. It also helped pave the way for the establishment of the Scottish Parliament.

When the Scottish Parliament opened in 1999, the members were elected through the Additional Member System (often called Mixed Member Proportional abroad). 73 Members of the Scottish Parliament are elected from constituencies (using First Past the Post), and a further 56 are elected from eight regional lists.

Seats are awarded from these party lists in order to ‘top-up’ the constituency seats – i.e. to make the final results more fairly reflect the proportion of votes cast for each party. (That’s because First Past the Post results in hugely disproportionate results on its own – millions of votes go to ‘waste’ if they aren’t cast for the winner or are cast for them after they have enough votes to win).

How proportional is the system in Scotland?

A way of measuring the proportionality of electoral outcomes is via the Deviation from Proportionality (DV) Index. The DV Index is calculated by adding up the difference between each party’s vote share and their seat share in each electoral area and dividing by two, giving a ‘total deviation’ score. The higher the score, the more disproportionate the result.

Westminster election results in recent years were in the 20s (2015: 24, 2010: 22.7, 2005: 20.7), the Scottish parliament has never had a result worse than 12.1.

In other words, compared to Westminster, the Scottish Parliament is very proportional – seats match how people vote. That matters not just for how people feel represented and listened to, but will also make a difference to the diversity and range of issues that get heard.

How it works

In the Parliament’s lifetime, Scotland has elected two coalition governments, a single majority SNP Government and now an SNP minority government. It has been a time of learning – and very few if any Scots would move away from a proportional electoral system now.

The Scottish Parliament in its second term abolished First Past the Post system for Scottish local council elections and replaced it with another proportional system, the Single Transferable Vote.

The Single Transferable Vote (STV) – our favourite system at the ERS! – is a form of proportional representation which uses preferential voting (you rank candidates 1,2,3 etc) in constituencies that elect more than one MP.

STV ensures that very few votes are ignored. For example, if your first choice doesn’t secure representation, they use your second choice instead. This is unlike other systems like First Past the Post, where you have only one ‘X’ – and if it ain’t for the one winner, your voice won’t be represented.

Not going back

At the final set of council elections under the old First Past the Post system in 2003, 61 councillors were elected unopposed, without a vote. It was simply not worth standing opposing candidates as the system made it so hard for voters to kick out the incumbents.

But in the first proportional election of 2007 there was not one uncontested seat. This introduction of STV not only meant that all votes were used in deciding who became councillors but that these electoral desserts where no election was held were removed in one stroke.

Only in Westminster elections do the votes cast not directly relate to the seats awarded. In the 2015 Westminster election, the SNP got 56 out of the 59 seats on only half the votes cast. That party itself stated how grossly unfair and damaging to public confidence in the democratic system this was – and they agree with others that it’s time to stop the stitch-up of Westminster’s rotten voting system.

It often comes as a surprise that there are still public elections in Scotland that are run under the First Past the Post system. A system designed for the British Westminster parliament at a time of empire, that systematically limits choice to just a couple of big parties, if voters want their vote to count. This is a historic hangover that seems incongruous in Scotland where all other elections are run under systems that ensure seats equate to votes cast. People want real choice and a proper voice in politics.

There is no doubt if the Scottish Parliament had the power to abolish the antiquated and unfair First Past the Post system from all public elections in Scotland, it would do so without hesitation. Either way, Westminster should follow Scotland’s suit and introduce a fair, genuinely democratic electoral system that puts the voters in charge.

Sign our petition to reform Westminster’s broken voting system

This piece was originally published by The Scotsman.

Talk of citizens’ assemblies is in the air. Former Conservative leadership contender, Rory Stewart has suggested holding one to break through the Brexit impasse. And on Monday, the Scottish Government released their plans for a citizens’ assembly to discuss Scotland’s democratic future.

But what are they? A citizens’ assembly is made up of a representative group of around 50 to 200 citizens, put together from the general public, like a jury. The selection of members is stratified to ensure that participants are as representative as possible of the general population according to certain criteria – usually gender, age, ethnicity, geographical location, and social background. Being put together like a jury means that the wider public can be confident that members are fellow citizens, just like them, and are not representing special interests.

Citizens then hear from experts and campaigners from across the spectrum and society to learn, consult, and then discuss between them on ways forward on complicated issues – away from the sometimes shrill, antagonistic process of (for example) an immediate, full-scale referendum.

The most well-known citizens’ assembly is that which took place in Ireland between 2016 and 2018. The Assembly was composed of a chairperson, appointed by the government, and 99 ordinary citizens ‘randomly selected so as to be broadly representative of Irish society’ in terms of age, gender, social class, and regional spread.

Members debated on a number of topics, including removing the country’s constitutional ban on abortion – and it had a huge impact. Several recommendations – including ending the ban on abortion – were successfully put to a referendum in May 2018.

When just 4% of people feel properly represented by Westminster (BMG polling for the ERS, May), they are looking for new ways to be speak out.

The ERS recently published a report on moving beyond the ‘Westminster model’ of politics, backing a more ‘deliberative’ model of democracy. We’ve been working on public engagement and innovations in democracy in Scotland for years, through public events collectively involving thousands of citizens, helping to shape their communities.

The ERS have also published new proposals for a fresh model for local democracy in Scotland, featuring permanent citizens’ assemblies to feed into local decision-making. And on a UK-wide level, we helped run a national citizens’ assembly on Brexit – which could form a template for an government-backed one in future.

So we’re delighted that the Scottish Government has decided to use citizens’ assemblies to upgrade Scottish democracy.

Old fashioned party politics and a binary vision have failed to provide solutions that Scots can unite around.

The initial structure and the open questions are a good start. Our campaign for more people power at a local level through our ‘Act As If You Own the Place’ initiative has taught us a great deal about what the gold standard in public involvement might look like. We know from our own experience and research that the assembly design and the way assemblies are run are crucial for their success. The devil will be in the detail.

The hard work starts now: there is a lot of work to do on this and in making sure the Scottish people see the assembly as the trusted, independent institution that it should be.

It’s positive that the government are keen to hear from experiences here in Scotland and from around the world.

So our verdict is so far so good – and we look forward to working with all partners on ensuring this is the best deliberative democratic process possible.

On the evening of Monday July 8th the ERS will be hosting a public debate in Edinburgh – featuring experts and politicians – to discuss the citizens’ assembly plans. 

Contact mediaoffice@electoral-reform.org.uk to find out more. Joanna Cherry MP QC, Dr Jess Garland, and Dr Oliver Escobar are confirmed already. 

Sign up for ERS Scotland’s Citizens’ Assembly event