I DO not understand the obsession some people have with the worst form of proportional representation - the Single Transferable Vote (STV) advocated for Scotland by Dr James Gilmour (Letters, July 1).

It may have some merit for Westminster given that even the worst forms of proportional representation will always be better than first past the post, but to advocate that the Scottish Parliament with its imperfect but superior voting system should change to the inferior STV system is just silly.

Only three countries in the world use STV for national elections. Ireland, Malta and Australia (for the Senate). Malta and Australia have both been forced to modify their systems so much so that they both now more resemble list systems while Ireland suffers from very low levels of proportionality compared to other countries and additionally has a system that leads to particularly low female representation as well as excessive parochialism amongst elected representatives. It stands as an indictment of FPTP that even the Irish system is superior but why would we want it in Scotland?

The Scottish electoral system certainly needs to be improved but it should be improved by increasing proportionality, not decreasing it. Scandinavian style adjustment seats should be introduced at the national level so that parties' share of the seats matches their share of the votes as closely as possible.

The virtue of STV is supposedly that it allows voters to choose between candidates in the same party. In the first instance this can also be achieved by open list systems, but secondly why is this such a virtue when voters will typically have no idea who these candidates are? Certainly in May I voted SNP on the sole basis of the party, I had never heard of the candidate and still could not name him. Most voters are the same; people vote for parties and the electoral system should reflect this.

Iain Paterson,

2F Killermont View,

Glasgow.