Paul Hutcheon's exclusive report of problems within the Labour Party over the selection of some of its list MSPs once again draws attention to several of the defects in the additional member voting system we use to elect MSPs to the Scottish Parliament (Labour bid to axe 'weak' List MSPs, News, July 6).
The political parties determine the order of the candidates on the regional (or additional member) lists and we, the voters, have no way of altering the order in which those candidates are elected. So list MSPs are accountable only to their parties, not the voters.
Fortunately, there is a simple solution: all our MSPs should be elected by the single transferable vote system of proportional representation from multi-member constituencies. Then all our MSPs would be elected on the same basis; no longer would there be any "second-class" list MSPs. And no longer would the parties have control of the order in which their successful candidates were elected.
Proper proportional representation of the political parties would be retained, but all the MSPs would be directly accountable to local voters.
James Gilmour
Edinburgh
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